“We’re wasting our time!” snaps Reaching the West Reaches, and swings down hard to slice the dwarf in half. The little man sighs and takes the energy of his mighty strike, steps in, turns and buries the blade deep in pumice. Reaching the West Reaches strangles and Wishes and pulls with gearground arms, but the sword is stuck.
“I cannot teach him,” Stumble Jade growls. “The boy has no patience.”
“He will learn patience.”
“Hmm.” He smooths his bald head again and again. “Much anger in him. Like his father.”
“Was I any different,” murmurs Ratio Tile, “when you taught me?”
You’ve been hunting Maura Tierney for so long that it has reduced you, like balsamic vinegar boiling, to a potent solution with a vigorous scent. And here she is in La Jolla, eating breakfast in front of you: poached egg and salmon over whole wheat toast.
Explain to her that she should kill you.
Ask her if her gun is loaded.
Tell her to tie you to the subway tracks.
Slide your cell phone across the table, already speed-dialed to the number that will explode the tiny bomb next to your heart.
“No,” she’ll say gently, and watch you sob.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
If you’re big enough to get by on one breath a year, you can hibernate for a very long time. Matociquala has.
The effort it once took to irrigate Las Vegas seems absurd, in 2050, as meltwater trickles down from Hubbard to refill the Precambrian sea. The West is a greenhouse, and things long dormant are waking: flowers, and trilobites, and beasts aching for heat.
His crypt is broken; the waves of his footsteps capsize speedboats down the Strip. Lost salmon climb balconies in ancestral terror.
Matociquala, his hour come round at last, lurches toward the desert city like a stóribjörn.
Okay look the whole reason they got Spanish Inquisited is because Ahasuerus wouldn’t tell him how he lost half his nose. A simple question! But the little prick would just snigger through his remaining nostril and say he’d used it as bait.
So Longinus brought the matter to some people who knew how to get answers and, here’s the tricky part, turns out that accusing someone else is technically saying they led you into heresy, so you’re both screwed. Which, y’know, come on. Longinus pointed out that compared to him, his investigators were the real heretics.
They really didn’t like that.
“This crosses you,” says Rowan. “This covers you. This is beneath you, before and behind you. Hope. House. Here is your Crown. Here is your Self.”
The card is full of terror, trumpets and storm. “Gabriel,” says Holly. She touches the waxy face of Judgment and it is in that moment the most beautiful thing that anyone has made, that anyone will make.
“Yes,” says Rowan softly. “You’re the angel.”
Holly’s still caught in a stare; Rowan gathers up the rest of the tarot without looking at them. They’re both stoned anyway, and nothing good comes of reading those you love.
Smashcore is like noise music except it can only be properly appreciated while your car is wrapping itself around a telephone pole, and for some reason Sofia’s mom won’t even let her have the old Camry to try it.
“You hardly even drive it,” Sofia points out reasonably.
“That doesn’t mean you can wreck it,” Mom groans. “You’re not even sixteen!” she sneers. “And all it’s going to sound like is you breaking your neck!” she screeches, over and over, like a broken macaw.
Sofia tries running her bike into a wall with her headphones on but obviously that doesn’t work.
“You can report me,” says Proserpina, “and I can report your improper attitudes and behavior toward me.”
“My what?” says Miss Havisham, in honest surprise.
“How else,” says Proserpina, “would I be able to draw your tattoo?”
Miss Havisham stares for a moment. “Is this how you see everyone who’s kind to you?” she says quietly. “Your classmates, who adore you, and your Radiane, and that little fox Iala. Does every one of us have a use?”
Then the shame building deep in Proserpina’s belly becomes painfully physical, and she sits down with her boy’s shirt ripping in one tight fist.
Hoof only notices because he’s been doing it for three days. It’s not impossible: you could try on a well-fueled humbug, or a trike, if the ground were flatter here. But no one’s ever kept up with her on foot this long.
So she makes camp and waits until he walks up and plops down next to her fire, smiling shyly. He puts his sword down without a glance at the gun in her lap.
“What kind of robber are you?” says Hoof, in some bewilderment.
“I’m Found Dog!” he says cheerfully. “Found Dog is a good person to be!”
Friday, February 29, 2008