Little Gods (25 page)

(she is a goddess) but I helped finish her off.

In the morning she was still perfect. My breath tasted sour and she flinched away when I went to peck her cheek. I pissed and shaved and she watched like somebody seeing a snake eat a rat for the first time. I sucked in my stomach, brushed my hair, took a shower.

She followed me to the kitchen and didn't want breakfast. She gagged at the smell of frying sausage. She was still naked.

Her breasts defied gravity. I was hungover and felt like dogshit on a bootheel. I noticed that her feet didn't touch the floor. She suggested that I could be a better housekeeper, wrinkling her pretty nose at the dishes in my sink.

I walked her to the door. She didn't want a ride. My car, she said, smelled like cigarettes and fast food. She would fly. “You can call me if you want,” she said doubtfully.

“Just light a white candle, scented with rose and jasmine, and invoke my name five—"

“Sure,” I said, and closed the door.

Unfairy Tale

Molter Keen gamboled in the field: small, purple-ragged and clouded with flies. His nose wiggled, scenting the dry flowers and the bodies rotting in air. He hopped onto a sandy boulder beside the corpse wall and crossed his legs. The wall rose twenty times his own height, a terraced cliff-face. Molter craned his head and counted broad stone shelves. Ten, fifteen, twenty-five. Every shelf held a naked body and a contingent of fat crows.

And on the top shelf: The beauty, sleeping.

Wasps built a nest at the base of Molter's skull. The back of his neck burned red from repeated stings. He opened his mouth and flies buzzed out, zipping in close formation to feast on the bodies. They flew to the wall's top and circled the beauty's perfect unrotting head. Round and round they went, unable to strip her bones, and returned to the plague victims, the broken-backed old, and the infant with the too-big head.

Molter picked a wing from between his teeth and spat. Clouds streaked the sky black and dark blue, the wall was stacked with the dead (and the beauty), and the fleas in his hair slept. A blessed day in the no-longer-desert. Who cared if the air was too wet? Who cared if flowers grew where only stones had flourished? Not Molter, not today.

Mosquitoes boiled forth from his navel and flew across the sandy field. They returned quickly, full of blood, and bit him in the crook of the elbow.

Other blood mixed with his, and he grinned. Corrigan's blood. Molter did not love the new wet not-desert, but he accepted it in exchange for the gifts of the green folk from beyond the misty veil. He'd once been a wandering djinn, companion to scorpions, capable only of making a temporary body from blowing sand. After a meeting with the king of the green folk he came away with buzzing insects and a beautiful body of imitation man-skin. In exchange, he only had to defend the beauty, and accept the greening of the desert.

Corrigan approached, his white scarves fluttering, his yellow hair streaming. His eyes were the pure blue of the desert sky before the clouds came. “Hail, djinn,” he called. “Do you have any word of the mortal?"

Molter spat. Spit! Water from mouth to earth! “He doesn't come. He will not reach the desert, I think."

Corrigan shook his head. “He wants the beauty. He pursued us over an earthly continent, and then across the misty veil to the island of my people. A journey to the desert will not stop him, though we hope
you
will."

“He will not pass me,” Molter said. A long millipede slipped out of his mouth and started to crawl down his chin. He slurped it back in.

Corrigan covered his face with a scented handkerchief and glanced at the corpse wall. “Perhaps you should bury those bodies,” he said. “Haven't you noticed them swelling and starting to stink?"

Molter had noticed. The local tribes always put their dead on walls for the vultures and elements to reclaim. The corpses normally dried to stringy husks and dust, but since the green folk had brought flowers and grasses and rain, the bodies puffed and rotted. “There can be no burying. The sands shift, and uncover the graves."

Corrigan sighed and sniffed his handkerchief. “In a few more months, we'll have good digging soil here, and the humans can dispose of their dead properly."

Molter wanted to protest, to say “The sands sing at night, and whisper with shifting.” But he owed Corrigan's king service, and so kept silent. “The mortal has not come. No sign of sword or lips or pure heart. May I return tonight to the caravan trails, to whisper madness and make bargains with humans?"

“We gave you a body,” Corrigan said, turning his back to the wall. He looked over the spreading blot of flowers and grass. “You may not leave until your service is completed. I thought your kind were used to strict conditions, being sealed in clay pots and bound in caves for a thousand years, things like that."

Molter didn't answer. He wished to say “I am Il-a-mo-ta-qu'in, and no man has ever bound me,” but he no longer owned that name. The green folk called him Molter Keen, and they owned his service. He laced his fingers together and smiled as mites crawled from beneath his fingernails. A good trade, he thought. This flesh will outlast my service.

“I've been thinking,” Corrigan said. “Before the mortal comes to wake the beauty, you should prepare obstacles. Perhaps construct a castle, and put her in a tower? You could surround the tower with thorns, or thick trees that grow more quickly than he can cut them down. Or a stream full of snapping, biting fish."

“A stream?” Molter said. He knelt and took a handful of sand. Despite the flowers and the rain, the earth still sifted brown through his fingers. “There is a pool to the south, but the sand will not hold much water or ... trees?"

Corrigan kicked at the sand, uprooting several small flowers. “Damned desert. In other countries, we could arrange proper obstacles."

“Why didn't you? Why bring beauty here, then?"

Corrigan looked at him, then at the cloudy sky. “We tried the obstacles. The mortal overcame them, and nearly reached the beauty. So we brought her here, crossing distance quickly through the land beyond the veil, in hopes he would not follow. But he has. He is implacable."

“I'll tear him arm from chest, head from neck, when he comes,” Molter said.

“What?” Corrigan said. “Is that how you do things here? Such an attack is out of the question. Have you no grace, no honor? If he can reach the beauty and kiss her, he will break the sleeping curse and have her love. We may impede his path, but we cannot harm him directly."

Molter pondered. A beetle crawled from under his tongue and he bit down on it, chewing. The carapace cracked between his molars. Corrigan looked pointedly away and muttered something under his breath.

“I will stop him,” Molter said at last. “If not head from neck, another way.” He hopped from the boulder and scampered away from the small patch flowers, into the desert proper. The huge crows had driven away the local vultures with their numbers, but many still flourished over the sands. Molter had spies among the bald, reeking birds, and he wished to consult them.

I hope the mortal approaches, he thought. So that I can return to the desert, and the wet green folk will take their flowers away.

Days later, Molter sat again before the wall with Corrigan. The sweet stink of bursting bodies wafted from the shelves. Molter's bright rags hung dirty and disheveled, and grubs fell from holes in his imitation skin. “Obstacles
all
failed,” Molter said. A big scorpion trundled slowly from a rip in his stomach, waved its claws, then scurried back inside. “The dunes moved and filled the spike-pit. Boulders poised to fall, instead sank into sand. He jumped over the poison stream, one hop.” Molter had damaged his new body often while setting the obstacles.

“I was against this from the start,” Corrigan said. “If we couldn't stop the mortal from his quest, of course you desert kind couldn't."

“I could have gutted the mortal,” Molter said. He crushed a rock in his hand savagely, tearing his fingers. Stupid flesh, he thought. He looked up. Stupid clouds. “Could have filled his throat with sand. Torn out his eyes. Not stupid
obstacles
."

“He's coming,” Corrigan said. “He's almost here. He's passed the trials, and nothing remains but the kiss, the revival, and the triumphant return.” He smirked. “Enjoy your body while you can, djinn. My king will surely take it away once beauty wakes. Your petty obstacles failed."

Obstacles, Molter thought contemptuously. Corrigan didn't understand that djinns worked differently than his own kind. Molter scurried up the rock shelf, shedding insects as he went, until he crouched on the highest point, beside the beauty.

Corrigan compared her skin to snow, her lips to roses, but Molter did not know these things. He saw her skin was white as bleached bone, her lips red as the sunset seen through dust. Her hair was yellow as snake's bile, and soft as camel's hair. Corrigan rose slowly, levitating smoothly, until he hovered with his head above the level of the shelf.

Molter thought of the approaching mortal and smiled. A cockroach fell out of his mouth, onto the beauty's unmoving face, and scurried away. “She cannot be hurt, yes?” Molter said.

“She is beyond the touch of time and death,” Corrigan agreed. “Until the pure-hearted mortal kisses her."

Molter bent his head and pressed his mouth to the beauty's. He thrust his tongue between her red lips, parting them.

“That's disgusting!” Corrigan said. “Stop it.
You
can't wake her, djinn. You've no heart, pure or otherwise."

After a long moment, Molter raised his head. He smiled, then jumped off the shelf, straight at Corrigan.

Corrigan floated backward. Molter landed in a crouch on the sand, jarring lose a small rain of insects.

“Fool,” Corrigan said. “This is no time for games.” He settled onto the boulder.

Molter didn't answer him. He sat on the rock and watched the fat fluffy clouds float by.

“There,” Corrigan said. The mortal crested a dune and approached them. He wore a white cloth over his head, like the tribesmen in the area. A waterskin hung across his chest. He stepped on the flowers.

“Are they all so big and pale in his country?” Molter asked.

Corrigan shrugged. “Some."

The mortal reached them. He hesitated, hand on the hilt of his sword. “Do you challenge me, fair folk?” he asked.

“You pursued us to this desolate place,” Corrigan said. “You overcame our obstacles. We will not prevent you from touching beauty. We are bested."

Molter watched as ants ran across the backs of his ravaged hands.

The mortal came to the wall, keeping his eyes fixed on Molter and Corrigan. He climbed the shelves, stepping on bodies as he went.

He tread on a bloated woman's body and nearly slipped. The mortal recovered his grip, but the body rolled from the shelf and fell a dozen feet to the ground. Molter started toward the body, angered by the casual sacrilege. He didn't especially care if humans died, but their bodies belonged to the creatures of the air, not the earth. He stopped himself before he reached the body and gave Corrigan an open-mouthed grin. Biting flies emerged from his mouth and flew into his nostrils.

“Let's watch the kiss,” Molter said. He climbed a mound of boulders for a clear vantage.

“I don't see why,” Corrigan said, but he floated to the top of the boulders anyway.

The mortal wasted no time touching the beauty's face or making pretty words for deaf ears. He knelt and bent to kiss her.

Several scorpions emerged from the beauty's mouth before the mortal's lips touched her. Corrigan gasped. The scorpions ran across the mortal's face and plunged their stingers into his lips, cheeks, and eyes. The mortal shrieked and lurched back. He clawed at his face, and rolled from the shelf, falling heavily to the ground.

Molter put a finger in his mouth. A scorpion crawled out and sat in his palm. Molter kissed its stinger, then set it on the rock.

“You did that,” Corrigan said, awestruck. “Not an obstacle at all, but a trap."

“I favor traps,” Molter said.

Corrigan made as if to touch him, then drew his hand back and wiped it on his chest. “Well done, djinn. The king will be most pleased. He may allow you to caper at his feet when he comes to take his holidays here—"

“No,” Molter said. “Take the beauty, flowers, wet, clouds, take it all away. The desert is done with you.” He watched the mortal thrash at the base of the wall.

“You don't understand,” Corrigan said. “I'm offering you a place in the king's court."

Molter stripped a layer of skin away from his arm and let it flutter to the ground. A puff of sand rose from the hole in his flesh. “I am Il-a-mo-ta-qu'in. I refuse your flesh and obstacles. Go. Tell your king."

Corrigan tightened his lips. He floated to the corpse wall and took the beauty in his arms, then returned to the ground. He walked across the flowers and over the dunes.

Molter tore away great flaps of his skin. The wind rose at his wish, and scorpions scurried from his body, devouring the smaller insects. Sand covered the flowers, and the clouds moved swiftly toward the horizon. The crows took flight, following Corrigan to his green land beyond the veil.

Molter left his imitation skin lying on the ground. Returned to his pure form, he built a brief body from dust and stone. He kicked sand over the convulsing, dying mortal. He knelt by the bloated woman-corpse that the mortal had displaced. Reverently, with hands of golden sand, Molter returned her to her place on the wall.

Down with the Lizards and the Bees

I dreamed monitor lizards were eating my face; it was one of
those
dreams, so I got up off my futon, dressed by the gray dawn light from the high windows, and went out. I wore fingerless gloves, so no one could cross my palm with silver when I wasn't paying attention—I'd been bound once too often
that
way. The trains were crowded, but people moved away from me, though I don't look particularly derelict or mad; they could sense my difference from them, that's all. I changed trains at three different stations, though I could've gotten to my destination in one. I wanted good omens, even manufactured ones, some charms spinning a little in my direction.