Wildcard (51 page)

“Do you like hurting people?”

Fernando pulled the glowing brand out of the
fire, inspected it, walked over to Karl.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

He held the brand up to Karl’s chest,
stopped just before it touched him. Karl could feel the heat, even
on his face. “Oops, upside down,” he said cheerfully, as if they
were walking and he had dropped a dime. He rolled the brand 180
degrees.

“Any last words, Karl?”

“Fuck you.”

“Es very rude, Signore.” Fernando put the
brand on Karl’s forehead, searing the flesh away. Karl screamed.
“Hold still or it will be done again in another place.” Karl
somehow held still as he screamed. “Good boy, Karl.”

Fernando walked over to a bucket of water,
doused the brand, moved it around in the water, took it out,
scrubbed it with a sponge, swished it again, dried it off, and hung
it back on the wall. “My favorite.” He gazed at it as if it were
his child.

“You have to wash off the bits of skin
after,” Fernando said, looking over his shoulder at Karl. “It’s
important to keep your tools clean. Remember that, Karl. Keep your
tools clean. An important lesson.”

“You said important twice,” Karl gasped.
“Work on your English.”

“Thank you for your kind advice.” Fernando
walked back. He dabbed at Karl’s forehead with a rag. “Need to
clean up the blood.” He applied a salve to the wound, then held a
mirror so that Karl could look at himself. The word ‘fool’ was
branded on his forehead.

Fernando put the mirror and the rag in a
cabinet. “Why not a real answer, Karl? Why do you wish to see our
wonderful Poet? You must know why, even if you do not understand.
Otherwise, I cannot let you enter that sacred place.”

“Tell me why, so I can know.”

“I do not know myself, Karl. I only know
when you tell me. Until then, I help you remember.” He picked up a
large axe. “I hope you survive the process.” He carried it to a
stone wheel with bicycle pedals, sat down, and began pedaling. He
put the blade against the stone as it began to turn.

“I like to pedal backwards. I like the stone
to turn against the blade. You have to have a steady hand, so you
don’t chip the blade to do it that way, but you get better sparks.
Can you hear me over the noise, Karl? Sorry about the noise, but
you really need to maintain your equipment. It should be sharp as
well as clean.”

He flipped the axe over to grind the other
side. “Just a few strokes on the other side. Not even strictly
necessary, but I like to be balanced. Done.” He picked up a hand
stone from the worktable.

“You must to take off the burrs at the end.
The wheel leaves a burr on the blade. I like that word, burr.
Anyway, you pull the hand stone down at approximately a 30 degree
angle, knocking the burr off. The wheel only leaves it on one side,
so you only have to do one side. There, very sharp. What do you
think, Karl? That is a very sharp blade, is it not? I could take
off a man’s hand at a stroke. Probably even a foot. A leg,
especially at the thigh, would take two. Maybe three.”

“What about a head?”

“Hmm, that is a good question. I have never
thought about it. I could do it in one. If I had it set up
executioner style. But I’m not an executioner, Karl. I’m an
inquisitor.”

He raised the blade over his head.

“‘You must father yourself to create your
special demise,’” Karl quoted.

Fernando lifted the blade over his head. He
smiled at Karl and swung.

The Inquisitor chopped the axe down a second
time. Karl brought his arms up, saw severed ropes tied to his hand.
Fernando brought the axe down twice more. Karl’s legs were free,
bits of rope hanging off of them.

“You may see the Poet now.”

Karl stepped through a door that he hadn’t
noticed before.

He was in a study which had a wainscot of
deep cherry wood with a matte varnish. The upper walls were ivory,
the paint having a faux effect, like marble. The floors were rustic
tile, and a simple chandelier hung from the ceiling. The furniture
was from a nobleman’s castle, overstuffed, dark leather chairs with
wide wings trimmed in wood. A Persian carpet, an L-shaped oak desk
with a quill in ink. A few sheets of high-quality unruled paper on
the desk, paper edges slightly misaligned. The L-turn of the desk
was rounded, instead of at a sharp angle.

The desk stood in front of large bay
windows, curving around it to almost create a separate room within
the large study. The occupant of the desk could either have his
back or his right side to the window while accessing the desk. The
chair was a comfortable looking office chair with arms. Karl wanted
to sit down in the writing chair, but didn’t. He looked at the poem
on top. Not in English, or even in characters he recognized from
the human world.

He could see the ocean below. The house, or
whatever building it was, stood on a high cliff. Karl could see a
pier with a sailboat far down. The ocean was a little too blue. He
could hear the waves if he listened. They taught as they rolled
obliquely to the shore. He could see one edge of each wave as it
struck the shore first, then, in a long, measured push, the rest of
the wave rolled itself against the rocky beach below. Gulls pinned
around, keening like lost children at a fair. Searching. Making the
air currents their own.

The white drapes of the window echoed their
movements in the breeze, blowing in, caressing Karl like a lover
who had been casually awaiting his return. He was in the window,
not conscious of having moved there, and looked down on the ocean.
A mild afternoon breeze, it smelled of salt and carried the sound
of the waves and the gulls in that floating way of the shifting
line where the land meets the sea.

Clouds puffed the sky like a cotton field
after the harvest. White, no grey at all, and moving slowly.

“A peaceful place of gradual change,” he
said.

“Where the tempest touches our hearts, but
spares our lives,” said a woman’s voice. Karl turned,
surprised.

“We are brought to a different gauge, our
pain measured in verse.

There is no wolf at our door, but our
sadness is no less deep for that.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ve been searching
for that line. Apparently it wasn’t mine to find. Hi, I’m the
Poet.”

She was of average height, with a round,
pleasant face, blondish hair, shoulder length, tied back, slightly
wavy. Blue eyes, early 30’s, she was pretty, but not beautiful. A
girl next door.

“What do you mean, find the line?”

“It was a hidden line, about this place.
Hidden in the room. The final hurdle into this world, you might
say.”

She looked into the corner at a leather
chair. Karl noticed the cat for the first time, solid black with
black eyes. It was invisible in the chair, until she drew his
attention to it. He was transfixed.

“Would you like to meet Thanatos? He is
beautiful, isn’t he?”

“Thanatos?”

“An association with death. Death appears in
the… poems. A lot, actually.” She laughed. “He helps me write. He
probably gives me the poetry to be honest. Some of them.”

“I noticed. The death theme in the poems, I
noticed, that is. Not that a cat gave you the poems.”

She touched her right thumb and curled index
finger to her lips, grinning. “Why don’t you sit down? What’s your
name?”

“Karl.” He came around the desk, sat in an
armchair around a black, oval coffee table.

“Actually, Karl, I changed my mind, as women
will do. Let’s go onto the terrace.” She emphasized the second
syllable. “Out there.” She showed him onto a terrace looking over
the sea. “I’ll be there shortly. OK?”

She came out a moment later with a bottle of
white wine, two glasses, and a simple tray of hors-d’ouevres.
Cheese, olives, fruit. She wore jeans, a grey tank top, a man’s
blue and white checked flannel shirt and leather sandals. A woven
leather bracelet wrapped her wrist, but there was no other jewelry
and no make-up.

“Tastes good. Ever since the Sergeant went
to the heart.”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know what that
means about the Sergeant, but food tastes good now. Or bad. But
right.”

“What is your name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have one, I suppose.
What do you wish to call me?”

“Ah, well, Virgil is the only poet I can
think of right now. Virginia?”

“OK. Maybe. Why not?”

“Why am I here, Virginia?”

“I don’t know. You came here, you tell
me.”

“I got a poem from you, saying to find
you.”

“That was not from me. What do you need to
know, Karl?”

“I never thought about that. I just knew I
had to get here. I hoped you would have the answer.”

“Sorry, I don’t.” She smiled, looked out
over the ocean for a moment, then back to Karl. “Let’s go sailing.
Would you like to?”

“Sure. Sailing. Sure, OK.”

They packed provisions, quite a few.

“How long are we going out?”

“Who cares? This way we can stay out as long
as we want.”

“Good plan.”

She had a 30 foot sailboat. All natural
wood, with shiny black trimwork, and gold railing. Two wooden
masts, ropes and wood pulleys. Authentic, it was a well-kept,
well-made antique.

“The wine is good now,” she said. “The food
is good now. After goodnight, Wildcard. What happened then? You
said something about the Sergeant and the heart.”

The wind was blowing strong but steady, and
they sailed in front of it, not tacking, so it was not loud. Just
the subtle thrill of slicing over and through the water, relaxing
and exciting at the same time. They had been out for a full day and
become comfortable together. He was leaning back, steering with his
bare feet.

“The Sergeant killed the old man and
Hazel.”

“Really? How interesting.”

“You didn’t know? In the poem, it says
something about the trillion voices going silent at once. It talks
about Wildcard dying and all sorts of stuff like that. It wasn’t
clear?”

“It was clear something happened. Or maybe I
am the trillion and first. Maybe I am the voice which didn’t go
silent, because I had to write it.”

“I can see that, but why didn’t you
know?”

“Read the poem, Karl. There is no mention of
Hazel and the old man.”

“You knew of them, though?”

“Yes. Although I didn’t know I knew of them
until you mentioned them. Odd, eh?”

She pulled a rope, tightening the mainsail.
Turn us about 30 degrees to port. Let’s tack into the wind. “Have a
bit of fun, what say you, wandering adventurer man?”

He rolled the wheel and the boat yawed
badly. They both grabbed the railing to keep from falling. “Whoa,
sailor. Slower on the turns. Boats are female, Karl. You have to be
gentle.”

“Sorry. Guess I should steer with my
hands.”

They smiled and she moved next him. She
kissed him as if she were just learning how, then reached back with
one hand and popped the rope free, liberating the mainsail. She
took his hand and pulled him below decks where they made love for
the first time while listening to the sound of the luffing
sail.

They were out for 2 weeks on the boat.
Blissfully, almost painfully, they were in love. Karl threw their
clothes overboard in high spirits after they hadn’t worn them for
three days. The weather was real weather, mostly beautiful,
slightly cloudy days, but a couple of storms, one of them intense.
They had been forced to stay awake through the night, holding a
trimmed sail to keep the boat heading in a favorable direction to
stay ‘in the proper run’. Karl didn’t know what it meant, so he
just did what she said. Tying down loose things, tightening lines,
eventually finding rope to tie them both off when it got
dangerous.

She brought out rain slickers which kept
them dry, but not warm. He regretted throwing their clothes
overboard, but she didn’t seem to care at all. When he apologized,
during the storm, she shouted back, “An act of free passion is its
own protection.”

He felt better about the clothes after that.
The storm was exhilarating, even after all the things he had been
through. It seemed more real, more immediate. Perhaps because he
was in love with her, but also because it was not some puzzle. It
was just this world, and it could kill them. He asked her if she
could die in something like that or if she would be saved because
she was the Poet.

“The old couple died, Karl. Anybody can die,
now.”

“Even Firstchild?”

“Maybe not him. He is beyond my
understanding. Most of it is, actually. I just write poems. Almost
like a trance, but I know what I am writing. I make some writing
choices, but much of it just…happens.”

“Can I ask him some questions?”

“He won’t help. He won’t speak to you again.
He only speaks to beings if he has to.”

“Do you communicate with him … it?”

“No. One poem, an odd one. Disturbing,
actually. Messy, chaotic.” She shuddered.

“Can you tell me the poem?”

“I’d rather not. I don’t really remember,
anyway. A small part had to do with his duties here. It was almost
like orders. Though it was very long. It still goes on.”

“How does it go on without you writing
it?”

“Perhaps I’m not the only poet, Karl.” She
kissed him, made a love hunger noise in her throat.

They had sex on a folded
sailbag, there on the deck of the boat, letting the wind take them
where it blew. Slow, sweet, gentle, then vigorous, hard, back to
gentle. Finally, after her 4
^th
orgasm, Karl came.
They lay on the bag afterwards, nested spoons bobbing, surrounded
by blue above and below.

Karl knew he had to leave and told her.

“I know you do. But, you still need to find
a way out of here. Although, if you don’t, I would be not
unhappy.”