“Would you like something to eat?” I asked him. You know how sometimes you just speak without thinking? It just seemed polite. He was a visitor to my . . . abode. He was a guest. You offer guests food and drink.
He looked down at the floor and I was braced for a dismissive remark followed by the usual disappearing act. But when he looked up he said, “What have you got?”
“I was going to have a PB and J.”
I’m pretty sure he didn’t know what that was. But he nodded, and I began to assemble sandwiches. “I have mixed berry preserves and apricot jam.”
“I have no fixed opinions on the matter,” he said cautiously.
I made him a PB and J with mixed berry. We stood awkwardly in the kitchen, eating. On his first bite his eyebrows shot up. He sniffed at it. Took a second bite and nodded to himself.
I poured him some milk. Because let’s face it, peanut butter and jelly and cold milk is perfection, really.
It was as he was drinking milk that I said, “You have some jelly on your shirt, right . . .” and pointed, which he must have thought was an effort to touch him, which caused him to recoil and in the process pour half a glass of 2 percent down his front.
“Oh, my God!” I cried while Messenger stared in confusion at the mess. I grabbed a paper towel meaning instinctively to wipe the mess, then realized that would be a mistake, and handed him the paper towel, which he used to make matters quite a bit worse by smearing the jelly and milk down his front and into the buttonholes.
“This is regrettable,” he said, and I believe he may have experienced the normal human reaction of feeling embarrassed.
“Oh,” I said. “You know what? You can actually go backward in time and avoid the spill.” I was feeling proud of myself for that clever insight.
He shook his head. “Time travel does not change future events. And we are not given the power in order to take personal advantage.”
“Do you have a spare shirt?”
He winced. “Not at the moment. My laundry is taken away and returned after a few days.”
I couldn’t help it: I laughed. I tried not to, but how could I not laugh at the notion that the most powerful person I had ever met or imagined meeting, the dread Messenger of Fear, had not kept up on his laundry. The mere fact that he had laundry seemed incongruous.
Messenger had been for me an object of mystery, anger, fear, and yes, desire, as Oriax had immediately seen. But he was still a boy. He was a boy with a ruined shirt and no spares available.
“Give it to me,” I said, “I can rinse it out in the sink.”
Messenger looked at me, down at his shirt, at me again, and said, “Um . . .” Which was the second strangest thing I’d heard him say in the last couple of minutes.
“Just . . . really. And I can dry it with my blow-dryer.”
He stood, indecisive—not an emotion I connect with Messenger—so I said, “Come on,” in a “no big deal” voice.
So he shrugged off the long coat he always wore and laid it over the back of a stool. Then, “My body. . .”
“Messenger, I know about the tattoos. I have one myself and will soon have more. I promise I won’t be horrified.”
It was a promise I could make, but not one I could keep.
He unbuttoned his shirt, including the ones at his wrists. Then, removed it and laid it on the stool closer to me.
I didn’t mean to stare. But how could I not?
His bare flesh was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting of hell. Each terrible punishment inflicted during his time as a Messenger of Fear was there on him in terribly vivid tattoos, tattoos not limited to the usual colors, not limited by the boundaries of decency. Many of them moved so that rather than just being a painting, he was like hundreds of small screens, each showing a scene of terror to sicken the mind. The tattoos almost seemed at times to jostle for position, wishing to be seen, as though each was pushing its way through a crowd of other sufferers to cry, “Look at me, see what I endured.”
He was watching me as I looked at his chest and shoulders and biceps. I felt ashamed, as though I was violating his privacy.
I took his shirt and brought it to the sink. I filled the sink with soapy water and plunged the shirt in. “I’ll let it soak for a minute. If you want, I could get you one of my T-shirts. It would be pretty small on you.”
I forced myself to turn back to him, I forced myself to look in his eyes and not at the tableau. When, inevitably, I glanced down, I struggled to ignore the tattoos and focus instead on the shape of him, on the very human shape of hard, flat stomach, of capable muscles and strong bones beneath. I imagined him without the marks of his office. I imagined I was looking at the most beautiful boy I’d ever known, stripped to the waist.
But then, I saw her.
She had long, auburn hair, shampoo commercial hair. Her face . . . and here I have to pause to control my wild emotions . . . her face was lovely.
But that beauty was fleeting, for the beauty was slowly devoured by a creeping rash, followed by boils and pustules that oozed blood and a clear, viscous fluid. As this disease or curse advanced, she—the tattoo—screamed silently, face all open mouth and wild eyes.
The auburn hair. The lovely face. I had had hints of them before. But it was the location of this tattoo that told the story, for it was directly over his heart.
I didn’t mean to say it, I knew that it would cause him pain, and I knew that I was seeing more than he wished to reveal about himself. But how could I not put a name to that terrible image? How could I keep from whispering . . .
“Ariadne.”
8
ARIADNE. MESSENGER’S LOST LOVE.
Ariadne, who he searched for anywhere and everywhere.
Ariadne, whose fate had been concealed from Messenger. For his own good? Possibly. As some part of his own punishment? Perhaps.
“Yes,” Messenger said at last and lowered his head to avoid my eyes.
“You . . . She was a . . . She did something wicked,” I said.
“Yes,” he said tersely.
“You were sent to offer her the game.”
“Yes.”
“And she lost.”
He nodded.
“That must have been . . . That must have been the worst thing in the world for you,” I said.
No response. His eyes were not seeing me but some other place, and some other face.
“Did she . . . What happened to her? After, I mean.”
“All this has been concealed from me. I knew her, I . . . I loved her. Before, you understand, before I became this.” He waved a hand that encompassed his body. I took it that he meant he had known and loved her before he became the Messenger of Fear. Back when Messenger and Ariadne had just been a boy and a girl.
“You must know if she survived,” I pressed.
“The fates of all who endure a visit from the Messenger of Fear are few: they recover and go on with their lives however damaged and transformed they may be, or else . . .”
“The Shoals?”
He closed his eyes and kept them closed for so long I would almost have thought he slept but for the labored way he drew breath, each exhalation shuddering ever so slightly. At last he regained control of his emotions, opened his eyes, and said, “I have not visited the Shoals since. Please don’t ask any more.”
He was done talking about it. What could I do but respect his right to keep at least some secrets?
I went back to the sink and scrubbed the stain, working the milk and jelly out of the fabric. I drained the sink, wrung the shirt out, filled the sink with clear water, and rinsed it.
I wanted desperately to ask more. But there were limits even to my curiosity when I know that it will bring pain. I didn’t need to know. He didn’t need to talk about it, at least not with me, not now.
Later. Maybe. Another time.
I spread his shirt on a coat hanger, hung it from the shower curtain rod, positioned my hair dryer on the toilet seat, using a towel to steady
and direct it, and turned it to “high.” The gray shirt fluffed out in the loud, hot wind.
I steeled myself to seeing him again, and returned to the kitchen to find him looking in the refrigerator, like any typical teenaged boy searching for food. His back was as full of ink as his chest, but with his shirt off it was the first time I had seen his back. How can the sight of such a tableau of misery still excite something in me? Was it that I had to look longer and more closely to see the lean waist, the strained muscle, the smooth V of flanks rising to strong shoulders?
He did not know I was watching, and I took advantage of the moment. Yes, what I was thinking was silly and wrong. My excuse was that I was lonely. My excuse was that he was my whole world now, aside from the damaged and the doomed and the monsters. My excuse was that I had some slight understanding now of what he had endured and I wanted to offer him some sort of comfort.
My excuse was that he was absurdly attractive and he was after all a straight boy and I was after all a straight girl and it would have been strange had I not been drawn to him.
I wanted to touch the boy who was not to be touched.
I closed my eyes and steadied myself with a hand on the counter. I pictured myself coming up behind him, sliding my arms around him, flattening my palms against his chest, kissing the place where strong shoulder rose to elegant neck, pressing my breasts against his back.
It was almost overpowering. I think I would have done it, except for the fact that I knew what would happen the moment I made physical contact with him. Far more than the images on his flesh would have flooded my mind. I would have touched him and been assaulted by detailed memories of each horror—the wicked things done, the games endured, the punishments that could drive a person mad.
It would have been a high price to pay simply to let my lips brush his neck. And yet such was my loneliness and my sad longing for him, that it still seemed possible.
I pushed the thought aside, feeling frustrated, and with my loneliness only exacerbated.
I made him another sandwich. Meat this time. He ate it. I gave him his dried shirt. He put it on and left.
I kicked the stool he’d been sitting on, and hurt my toe.
I ate and took a bath. Normally I bathe in the morning, but morning doesn’t seem to mean here what it used to mean in my old life. I didn’t have a schedule. There was no set wake-up time.
In my old life I seldom took baths per se; I preferred showers. But I didn’t want to sleep just yet, I wanted to think. I wanted to soak in hot water and think about who I was now and what I might yet be.
I would become the Messenger of Fear, that much was decided. I had taken the punishment on myself, and I did not regret it. I had caused a girl’s death. Yes, I had done that, motivated by spite and jealousy. I hadn’t meant for Samantha Early to shoot herself in the head, but I had nevertheless caused it to happen. I had only meant to hurt her, never to kill her. Just a poison thorn, and yet her heart had died.
As hard as this new life was for me, I did not regret my decision to accept the responsibility and the penance that came with it. There are things we do in this life that are wrong but not terribly important. There are things we do that are wrong but that we can make right, mostly right at least. But this was neither of those kinds of wrong. What I had done was deadly and permanent. Punishment should fit the crime.
I was restoring the balance.
When I had completed my time, first as apprentice and then as a messenger, I would feel that I had a right to resume my old life, though I was not certain such a thing would happen. I would never be able to undo what had been done, but I would have done all I could to pay for my sins. Beyond that . . .
The water was hot, just on the edge of painful, and there was no bubble bath to obscure from me the sight of my own body. I looked down at myself, at frappuccino flesh bent by water’s refraction, and imagined myself as covered in tattoos as Messenger. It would happen, I knew that. The day would come when I would not be able to bear looking at myself this way. And no boy would ever be able to tolerate touching me.
That was what made the longing so terrible, I realized. Because it wasn’t just some crush, or even desire in the usual sense of that word. It was a realization that for me the door to all of that messy, complicated, emotional reality was beginning to close. Even now any boy who touched so much as the back of my hand, or rubbed my neck, let alone kissed me, would be sickened by the images that would flood his mind.
I am not to be touched.
Never?
What did it matter? Was I still laboring under the pitiful misconception that I had some pride to defend? Was there someone I was trying to impress with my stoicism?
I was alone. I would someday be free of this duty, but I feared that I would be forever alone.
And there, just behind my closed eyelids, was the image of Messenger. No wonder I had stared at him so hungrily. No wonder Oriax had so quickly deduced what would happen between us—she had seen so clearly that a frightened, lonely girl would be drawn inexorably to the tall, mysterious boy in black.
I smashed my fist into the water.
No way out. I deserved my fate, yes, yes, I did. I did. But at the same time the less ethical parts of my mind were already looking for an escape. And such an escape had been offered, had it not? Oriax had been oblique, but it was there in her words and attitude, a suggestion that she was my way out.
Oriax.
What could she offer me? What did I want? My old life? Some entirely new life? That’s what I would have wanted, should have wanted. But what I wanted now, was him, and no, not Oriax, not any creature, could give me that.
I wondered if beneath the stunning and sensuous exterior Oriax was just like Graciella’s demon. Perhaps not an incubus, but some other form of demon. Maybe even something worse, if that was possible.
But I pushed that thought aside and turned my imagination to the question of Ariadne. She had done something wicked, clearly. And Messenger had been tasked to deal with her, to offer her the game, to discover and then inflict on her the most terrible punishment she herself could imagine.
What must that have been like for him? I tried to put myself in that same situation, but I had no great love in my life. I had no Ariadne of my own. The closest I could come was to think of my mother. We had all the usual teenaged daughter vs. mother fights, plus some more, since she’d started dating following my father’s death.
But could I impose the messenger’s fear on her if required? My God, how would I live with that? How did Messenger live with it?
That, at least, I knew the answer to. He lived with it by searching for her whenever he could, wherever he could think to look. Daniel indulged him, though Daniel clearly did not believe it was a wise use of Messenger’s time.
What in fact had happened to Ariadne?
And with that came the dark serpent of temptation, for my mind answered the question with a possibility: Messenger might choose to avoid the Shoals, but could I not go there alone? Could I not perhaps answer the question of Ariadne’s fate?
And if she were there in that place I’d heard spoken of only in the most somber of tones, would Messenger be free at last of his obsession?
I pushed the stopper knob up with my toe and the water started to drain out.
This much I was sure of: Messenger would never be whole until he knew the truth.
I slept. And I woke. And another “day” began, with no mention by Messenger or me of Ariadne.
Messenger and I appeared at a small house on a tidy lot with an impressive elm tree in the front yard and a fenced backyard.
Maybe the day will come when I feel not so queasy simply letting myself into people’s homes and indeed, minds, but it has not come yet. Messenger and I walked up the steps and through the front door. As always, solid reality seemed to bend out of our way as if it was avoiding our touch. As though walls and doors and window glass found us objectionable.
And were we not objectionable? That se
ems the kindest way to describe our wholesale violation of privacy. We entered where we wished, like police with a warrant to serve. I have no idea where Messenger is from, but as an American it did not sit well with me.
And yet it was a duty I had taken on. I was doing penance for my own sins by making others pay for theirs.
We had, in fact, come to inflict pain and fear. Not just cops: we were judge, jury, and, with the help of the Master of the Game, executioner, all rolled into one. We had powers no one should possess.
I fervently hoped that the book of Isthil I’d begun to read was something more than mere myth, because if we did not have some great purpose, if we were not saving the world by maintaining the balance, then we were just home invaders.
A woman was in the living room, sitting on the couch, watching TV with her feet up. She wore a blue Walmart uniform and had obviously come home from work too tired to change immediately. She was clicking through the channels with her remote control.
Did she look a little like Trent? Maybe a little.
I took stock of her, trying to find answers in her face. She was in her early thirties, not attractive, but not marked with any obvious sign of malice. She had a face that smiled frequently. Her eyes were disappointed but not angry.
Of course in the aftermath of my encounter with an incubus, I wasn’t prepared to take anything or anyone at face value.
There was a nonworking fireplace, bricked up against cold winds. On the mantel were framed photos. The woman and a man, laughing. The woman and a man and a much younger Trent. They must have been at a fair—there was a Ferris wheel in the background and they were sharing funnel cake.
And laughing.
I don’t know why but I have a hard time believing that full-throated laughter can coexist with evil. Maybe that’s naive. But the picture of the three of them seemed utterly incompatible with the memory of Trent slamming his baseball bat again and again and again . . .