James Baldwin - Stained Glass

On one side of the temple dome, roots had pushed themselves in through cracked patches of wall. I went across to them, moving like a ghost through the mental space, and bent to examine them. They were pink and white, brachiating like neurons. I recognized them. They looked like the roots of the trees on Eden.

The opposite wall had a patch of what looked like crackling frost from the floor to about waist-height. As I watched, the fissured pattern replicated fractionally at the edges, spreading like a bruise. The Yen.

I pressed my lips together. “I won’t let it take me, Kutkha. Not after what I’ve seen it do to others.”

“You say that now, my Ruach . ” Kutkha shivered again. “Remember these words when it comes to tempt you. See to it you never underestimate the lesser Morphorde, Alexi. Greater men than you have fallen to a simple Yen, reveling in the temporary power and release it brings.”

Power? Like the explosion I’d generated, the fireball?

My gut twisted painfully enough that it shook me out of my impromptu meditation, gasping. I licked my lip, and focused on getting my belt through the loops of my trousers. The thought of it, the loss of control to something capable of infecting the HuMan mind and soul, was terrifying… but whatever was going to happen would happen, and there was little I could do except act to manage the symptoms until I found the cure: Zarya, the Gift Horse.

About an hour later, we left the hospital and emerged into prismatic sunlight. It was a damp and cloudy day, and the city smelled like rain and dust. The texture of passing cars rasped on my tongue. For the first time in a very long time, I felt alive.

Zane gave me a ride on his bike back to the Strange Kitty clubhouse, and I spent the trip clinging to his back like a barnacle lest I sway too hard to one side and fall off. Strange Kitty was still zoned off with yellow and purple scene tape, evidence of the Vigiles Magicarum’s need to territorially piss on everything supernatural, but we were able to get into the Tigers clubhouse. When I opened the garage door, Binah leaped from the pool table, meowing and chirping, and jumped up onto my shoulder. She was beginning to fill out again. Her fur was growing back, cream-white and sleek. I caught her, scratching just above her tail as she tried to wrap her entire backside around my face.

More surprising were the children. Josie and another small boy, a face I vaguely recognized from the case file photographs, were playing Legos with two girls who had to be Ayashe’s children. Ayashe was ostensibly watching the four of them from the sofa, twitching her toe like a tail and glancing up from her copy of Cosmopolitan when we filtered inside.

“Well, look who the cats dragged in,” she drawled. “Weren’t sure you were ever going to be back with us, Rex.”

“I am notoriously resilient,” I said.

“Angbutt here probably helped,” Jenner added.

Ayashe’s mouth sloped across. “You mind your mouth around these kids here, Jennifer Tran.”

“It’s my freakin’ clubhouse.” Jenner sniffed, lifting her nose on her way to the bar. “I’ll friggin’ slag off in my clubhouse if I friggin’ want to.”

Talya broke away and made for the group of oblivious children and crouched down on her heels, her face alight with ready interest. “Oh my goodness! Are you building a house? Look at all these little horses. What are they doing, Mary?”

“Nooo, that’s not a house. That’s the pirate ship, and this is the island, and those are the cowboys that are res’king the princesses from the pirates,” one of the two dark-skinned girls said, lisping through her missing front teeth. “But they’re all girls.”

“No they’re not!” The boy whined, but it was clear that he knew he was outnumbered.

“Nuh-uh. Girls is what Josie wanted! You got the island!”

“There’s boys on the island!”

Josie looked up at Talya, but then gazed on past her to stare at me. She was dressed in fresh clothes, a pink t-shirt and jeans that hung a little loosely on her emaciated body. Her hair was clean, a shoulder-length red tumble of curls, and her cuts were healing into scars on her pale freckled skin. The haunted, gaunt lines were fading from her face, but as her eyes met mine, I felt a flash of something low in my gut. It was not an emotion. It was an instinct.

The little girl clambered to her feet under the watchful eye of Ayashe, who didn’t stop her as she crossed the room towards me. I bent to one knee, holding Binah to my shoulder so she didn’t fall. The cat jumped off anyway, and flopped onto the floor in front of me to present her belly for worship.

Josie drew up about a foot from Binah’s recumbent, purring form. She looked up at me, brow furrowed. “You look sick.”

Up close, I met Josie’s eyes a second time, and I saw it again: the glimpse of something numinous and golden and powerful. Her Neshamah. Josie had undergone Shevirah.

“So do you,” I replied. “But I hope we’ll both get better.”

Josie’s lips twitched nervously. “Tally said you were in the hostipal… umm… hos-pi-tal. But I don’t think that’s what you got sick with.”

“The doctors had to do some surgery.” Could she sense the Yen, now? This was a novel experience, one of the few times in my life that I had actually spoken to a child face to face. “I’m feeling better. What do you see?”

She glanced down, almost coyly, and then looked back up at me with her lip in her teeth. “It’s the lady with the rope around her neck.”

I felt it like a blow to the stomach and drew a sharp breath. I couldn’t help it. Her words should have drawn up a memory, but all I saw was blackness, and all I felt was the urge to wash my hands.

“Can I pet your kitty?”

Her voice startled me out of the moment of inversion. I cleared my throat, and didn’t try to smile. “Of course you can. She would like nothing more than for you to pet her.”

“Okay.” Josie didn’t smile much, and she radiated concentration as she knelt to pet Binah. The girl hadn’t been identified as a mage before her kidnapping, but she was now a spook in the making.

My tongue ached. I wanted to tell her how to hide her power, help her shield her mind and fake the tests that the Vigiles were sure to run on her if they ever noticed. Given what she had been through and what she had done to survive, there was a good chance they wouldn’t. The only reason I could see it was because she trusted me. As soon as Josie looked away, she was guarded, her mind shielded by the brittle barricade of dissociation. Her guilelessness was gone, and she would be reluctant to share knowledge of the comforting voice in her mind with adults. Shevirah was the shattering of innocence. For better or worse, Josie’s was gone.

Somewhat disconcerted, I left her to play with Binah and made a beeline for Ayashe. She set down her magazine and stood, and we shook hands. She motioned to the sofa beside her in offering.

“Please excuse me, but bending at the waist is painful. I prefer to stand.” I let go of her long fingers, and crossed my arms. Carefully. “Jenner told me what you dug up on John.”

Ayashe scoffed, and her lip curled in disgust. “You know what the worst part is? Me and Michael and Jenner, we were the ones who accidentally fed him all that knowledge about the Laws. Every damn… uh… durn thing. All he had to do was talk to the young Weeders he met, and listen to us at the Convocations. He somehow learned enough to lie his way into our inner circle. His real name was Harold Ryan, we think. He wasn’t even Native American. One of the Pine Ridge elders is flying out here to make sure he didn’t desecrate anything the tribes donated to the Museum.”