Caitlin Kiernan - Alabaster

"Maybe he ain't no angel. You ever stop and let yourself think about that, Dancy? Maybe he's a monster, too."

When she doesn't answer, it pokes her again, harder than before, drawing blood with its ebony claw; warm crimson trickle across her white shoulder, precious drops of her life wasted on the cellar floor, and she stares deep into the flame trapped inside the glass chim-ney. Her mother's face hidden in there somewhere, and a thousand summer-bright days, and the sword her angel carries to divide the truth from lies.

"Maybe you got it turned 'round backwards," the Gynander says and sets the lamp down on the floor. "Maybe what you think you know, you don't know at all."

"I knew right where to find you, didn't I?" Dancy asks it, speaking very quietly and not taking her eyes off the lamp.

"Well, yeah, now that's a fact. But someone like me, you know how it is. Someone like me always has enemies. Besides the angels, I mean. And word gets around, no matter how careful-"

"Are you afraid to kill me? Is that it?"

And there's a loud and sudden flutter from the Gynander's chest, then, like a dozen mockingbirds sewn up in there and wanting out, frantic wings beating against that leather husk. It leans closer, scalding carrion breath and the fainter smell of alcohol, the eager snik snik snik of its sharp white teeth, but Dancy keeps staring into the flickering heart of the hurricane lamp.

"Someone like you," she says, "needs to know who its enemies are. Besides the angels, I mean."

The Gynander hisses through its teeth and slips a hand around her throat, its palm rough as sandpaper, its needle claws spilling more of her blood.

"Patience, Snow White," it sneers. "You'll be dead a long, long time. I'll wear your pretty alabaster skin to a thousand slaughters, and your soul will watch from Hell."

"Yeah," Dancy says. "I'm starting to think you're gonna talk me to death," and she smiles for the beast, shuts her eyes, and the afterimage of the lamp flame bobs and swirls orange in the dark behind her lids.

"You're still alive 'cause I still got things to show you, girl," the Gynander growls. "Things those fuckers, those angels, ain't ever bothered with, 'cause they don't want you to know how it is. But if you're gonna fight with monsters, if you're gonna play saint and martyr for cowards that send children out to do their killing, you're gonna have to see it all."

Its grip on her throat tightens, only a little more pressure to crush her windpipe, a careless flick of those claws to slice her throat, and for a moment Dancy thinks maybe she's won after all.

"This whole goddamn world is my enemy," the thing says. "Mine and yours both, Dancy Flammarion."

And then it releases her, takes the lamp and leaves her alive, alone, not even capable of taunting a king of butchers into taking her life. Dancy keeps her eyes closed until she hears the trapdoor slam shut and latch, until she's sure she's alone again, and then she rolls over onto her back and stares up at the blackness that may as well go on forever.

After the things that happened in Bainbridge, Dancy hitched the long asphalt ribbon of U.S. 84 to Thomasville and Valdosta, following the highway on to Waycross. Through the swampy, cypress-haunted south Georgia nights, hiding her skin and her pink eyes from the blazing June sun when she could, hiding herself from sunburn and melanoma and blindness. Catching rides with truckers and college students, farmers and salesmen, rides whenever she was lucky and found a driver who didn't think she looked too strange to pick up, maybe even strange enough to be dangerous or contagious. And when she was unlucky, Dancy walked.

The last few miles, gravel and sandy red-dirt back roads between Waycross and the vast Okefenokee wilderness, all of those unlucky, all of those on foot. She left the concrete and steel shade of the viaduct almost two hours before sunset, because the angel said she should. This time it wouldn't be like Bainbridge or the Texaco Station. This time there would be sentries, and this time she was expected. Walking right down the middle of the road because the weedy ditches on either side made her nervous; anything could be hiding in those thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry briars, anything hungry, anything terrible, anything at all. Waiting patiently for her beneath the deepening pine and magnolia shadows, and Dancy carried the old carving knife she usually kept tucked way down at the bottom of her duffel bag, held it gripped in her right hand and watched the close and darkening woods.

When the blackbird flapped noisily out of the twilight sky and landed on the dusty road in front of her, Dancy stopped and stared at it apprehensively. Scarlet splotches on its wings like fresh blood or poisonous berries, and the bird looked warily back at her.

"Oh Jesus, you gotta be pullin' my leg," the blackbird said and frowned at her.

"What's your problem, bird?" Dancy asked, gripping the knife a little tighter than before.

"I mean, we wasn't expecting no goddamn St. George on his big white horse or nothin', but for crying out loud."

"You knew I was coming here tonight?" she asked the bird and glanced anxiously at the trees, the sky, wondering who else might know.

"Look, girly, do you have any idea what's waitin' for you at the end of this here road? Do you even have the foggiest?"

"This is where he sent me. I go where my angel sends me."

The blackbird cocked its head to one side and blinked at her.

"Oh Lord and butter," the bird said.

"I go where my angel tells me. He shows me what I need to know."

The blackbird glanced back over the red patch on its shoulder at the place where the dirt road turned sharply, disappearing into a towering cathedral of kudzu vines. It ruffled its feathers and shook its head.

"Yeah, well, this time I think somebody up there must'a goofed. So you just turn yourself right around and get a wiggle on before anyone notices."

"Are you testing me? Is this a temptation? Did the monsters send you?"

" What?" the bird squawked indignantly and hopped a few in-ches closer to Dancy; she raised her carving knife and took one step backwards.

"Are you trying to stop me, bird? Is that what you're doing?"

"No. I'm trying to save your dumb ass, you simple twit."

"Nobody can save me," Dancy said and looked down at her knife. In the half-light, the rust on the blade looked like old dried blood. "Maybe once, a long, long time ago, but no one can save me now. That's not the way this story ends."

"Go home, little girl," the bird said and hopped closer. "Run away home before it smells you and comes lookin' for its supper."

"I don't have a home. I go where the angel tells me to go, and he told me to come here. He said there was something terrible hiding out here, something even the birds of the air and the beasts of the field are scared of, something I have to stop."

"With what? That old knife there?"

"Did you call me here, blackbird?"

"Hell no," the bird cawed at her, angry, and glanced over its shoulder again. "Sure, we been prayin' for someone, but not a crazy albino kid with a butcher knife."

"I have to hurry now," Dancy said. "I don't have time to talk anymore. It's getting dark."

The bird stared up at her for a moment, and Dancy stared back at it, waiting for whatever was coming next, whatever she was meant to do or say, whatever the bird was there for.

"Jesus, you're really goin' through with this," it said finally, and she nodded. The blackbird sighed a very small, exasperated sigh and pecked once at the thick dust between its feet.

"Follow the road, past that kudzu patch there, and the old well, all the way to down to-"