Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) (36 page)

Japheem soured to think of people whose threads on the tapestry were cut.
“No, no, no, those are abominations. They should have died and yet they live! They create a shadow tapestry, an ugly thing. Do you know how I hear their souls?”

“How?” I asked when he waited for a reply.

“It is static. Szzzzt! Szzzzt! Szzzzzzt! Those are horrifically loud to me. I hear them everywhere. The Kreeling girl, oh, that poor girl of mine, how this world should have spared her knee and let her snip what has already been snipped in the cut. We became such good friends, that girl and I. I was the only one who understood. That was what she said. How was it, she asked, that I became a Ripper? Oh, it was the loneliness, I said. I wanted a friend. How rich is it to have a friend, second Jessa! Do you have friends?”

“Yes.”

“You
did
have friends,” he corrected, and tears stung in my eyes to think of London and Savannah and Kitts, the silly burping buddies, and everyone in Bellangame. I had been rich in friends. Japheem tapped a finger to his wrist like he wore a watch. “So terrible to live for all eternity and to do it alone. The Kreeling girl felt so badly for me, as I felt so badly for her. We became close friends over the years. She watched her compatriots go out on hunts and come back in glory and triumph. A vampire staked! A cut pulled apart! How it hurt her. Meanwhile she minded the caves and minded the caves and minded the caves some more. This is the work of old men and women, and she was young! A hero’s heart beat in that breast, yet how was it to shine? One day exactly like the next day, like the last day, like every day, pacing those quiet caves while everyone else
soars
. Do you like to fold shirts, Jessa?”

“Yes,” I said. It
was better than being bitten by anemoi. It was better than a thousand other things I could think of Japheem making me do.

“Yes.
Good, for in our many homes, my room is ever a mess. Trenton doesn’t tend my clothes the way I like. They need a woman’s touch.” Japheem stared at his gigantic pile of clothing and I wondered how a woman folded a shirt any differently than a man. Grandpa Jack folded his own clothes without any assistance from me, and my father usually did the laundry at home, not my mother. How I missed my parents!

While I added another folded shirt to a stack, Japheem said,
“We were best friends in time, Japheem the Ripper and the wounded Kreeling girl. Oh, but she was no longer a girl, no, no, no. A bitter woman with one friend, one friend in the entire world, she had one friend who understood. And I had one friend in the entire world in her. She crept closer and closer through those years, and the music ceased to trouble her so in time. What a sweet day it was when she kissed my cheek! Her poor fallen angel Japheem, innocently led astray by the wish for a friend.” The smile to creep over his lips unnerved me. “My poor kreolos hunter girl, innocently led astray by the wish for a friend.”

The stack of shirts was growing tall, so I began another one.
He had enough clothes for three wealthy young men. I made a separate pile of shirts that his wings had destroyed by bursting through. He giggled to see one in shreds and shrugged like a naughty boy. “We talked and talked without fear of being caught, for I had been placed very deeply in the caves. The old caretakers made her walk the distance, and never did they follow to check. Such happiness I felt to hear her come day by day! To have something to gaze upon other than my address carved into the wall! Step-stump-step-stump-step-stump. And then she cried Japheem! My sweet Japheem! She kissed me every day, twice then thrice until I said she was going to wear out the skin of my cheeks. So she moved to my lips every day, twice then thrice and one day she broke away in sadness that I could not hold her in my arms. More than friends now, that was what she felt for me. But how could I be a lover to her when I was trapped in these bindings, tucked into a hole in the caves? How, Jessa?”

“She removed your bindings,” I said.

“You skip ahead. I couldn’t be a lover to her this way, not as a man to a woman, and how she wanted to fly away with me. For us to have a home together, so she might spend her mortal life in happiness, and brighten some part of my eternity. For a year we played at the home we would build, on a mountaintop with a garden, a little brown dog for a pet. And how sad, how sad I was that I could never give her a child. No, fallen angels cannot do that. She was such a strong soul, a caring soul. I peered right into it, and I told her of the lovely things I saw and heard. And then she said Japheem, Japheem, couldn’t we just rip a child?”

I could see all of this sickening scene play
out as I separated more destroyed clothes from the pile. This had all been a game to him, his hoodwinking of the Kreeling girl, and she’d been drawn in so completely that
she
suggested the ripping. Japheem turned over his wounded leg carefully and drew up his blanket. “Her face lit up with joy to say this. A solution! Children died of so many foolish things back then, dirty water, lack of food, shoddy medical care. Oh, we could have our pick of children, and how we quibbled over a boy or a girl and what to name it. She wanted a boy, a boy named Japheem, so she could have her big Japheem and her little Japheem. This charmed her. I wanted a girl, a girl with eyes like her, so I could always see one of my girls and be in mind of the other. This charmed me. Such a perfect world we built in words; each one so stinging to that lonely woman who had nothing. No respect from her community; no hunts to liven her blood; no vengeance for her lost one; no man or child to call her own. She began to plot how to get me from the caves, a night with no guards at the exit, a night with no moon. And then one day she gave me a special smile that meant at long last, at so very long last, it was time.
Now
say what you said before.”

“She removed your bindings,” I repeated.

“Do you see how much you would have missed had I just gone on? What richness you would have lost in this story? That night she returned through the caves of sleeping, silent Rippers. The Ripper caves are a giant spider web within the earth, twists and turns in semi-darkness, with angels bound in chains along the strands. She kissed me twice and thrice upon my cheeks, twice and thrice upon my lips, and her hands, they bared me.”

His wings burst out
suddenly, frightening me into falling back into the corridor. The yellow of them was painfully ugly, the rays of the sun dragged through a mud puddle. He said, “What did I do then, Jessa?”

“Did you fly away?” I asked, wishing Makala
to call for me.

“Yes, yes, I flew away!
Past that address I had seen for so long that even when my eyes were closed, it shined there still. Through those caves we raced together, her finger pointing the way to our freedom. Left! Right! Left! Right! Straight! Up! Here! Then I was spinning upwards into that beautiful black sky after a hundred years, two hundred years, more than that . . . I did not know. But I was free. We spun and dipped and weaved and raced, over fields and cities and oceans and forests. We came to a mountaintop, high, so high the air was thin, high, so high the ground was ice. Safe this place, so safe and sweet, since no one lived for miles and miles, since no one could climb up or down that dangerous slope. At that peak I set her down, my broken Kreeling hunter girl, the love of my heart and the mother to be of our child, my sleeping beauty, and I left her there to die.” He laughed, his wings curling over his body. This kept him amused, guessing how long she waited for him to come back, how long it took her to understand that she had been abandoned. I tidied his clothes along the wall and he sent me away with the shredded shirts. I was supposed to put them in the trash, but I carried them to my cave to make more of a bed than the one I had.

That night, I shivered
in the rags of my bed and looked out to the stars. Shimmers of air passed over them, anemoi skimming the wind. The bites along my legs throbbed, and my wrist was deeply bruised from his grip. Within a groove I had hidden a granola bar, and I ate only half. The other half I hid back in the groove. I didn’t trust the benevolence with feeding me would continue. The Rippers complained meal to meal about the monotonous sandwiches, but I could only work with what was in the coolers.

Zofia was anxious to move on, and Makala’s newest feathers were coming in health
y. We would be leaving soon since Japheem’s burned leg wouldn’t interfere with his flying. My stomach had overturned to see the splotchy skin in the changing of his bandages. This injury would have landed a human in the hospital. He was healing on his own, slowly but surely.

I w
anted to jump from the cave and dash out my brains on the rocks. Instead I went to sleep and dreamed over and over of doing exactly that. Sometime in the night, I turned over and startled to see the shape of the skeleton. I wasn’t going to share this cave with it any longer. Gingerly, I picked it up and dragged it to the edge, where I threw it down to the water.

“Peace,” I whispered to that poor soul, whoever she had been.
The skeleton came apart on the way down, the anemoi fighting over the bones and not all of them making it to the waves. It made me ill, a last indignity visited upon the Rippers’ victim. One day, someone might be dragging my bones out to do the same. I didn’t want them to be toys for anemoi. Returning to my bed, I tried to go back to sleep.

In the morning
, the sea was angry and so was Japheem. It had no more provocation than his good humor. I brought him breakfast and he spat, “Why did you not come with me in Seataw?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He struck the sofa cushion, not placated by my apology. “Didn’t you realize your thread belongs to me now?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry,” I said a second time.

“Why? Why didn’t you know this? Are you stupid?”

“Yes.”

“Yes! Yes, she says! But her soul tells me this is a lie!
You are lying to me!
” The waves pounded hard against the rocks outside. “Lying gives you an ugly soul, so stop lying! Make your soul pretty for me!”

It must have blazed
, because the plate of food I had given to him was thrown at me. “Take care of that! Take care of that now!”

I bent down to pick up the plate and he shouted, “No! No! No! Get on your hands and knees and eat it like a dog!”

Getting down to my hands and knees, I stared at Adriel’s forgotten key ring. It was the last link I had to the world, to sanity. A low, menacing growl burst in my ear and I scrabbled away to escape an anemoi. Clambering onto the sofa at Japheem’s feet, I pushed up onto the wide back and huddled there as the creature stalked me.

“Funny how sharp the wind can be,” Japheem
said contemplatively. “You do not expect that, no.” The cushion depressed at his feet from the almost invisible creature mounting the sofa. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

“Japheem, please,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?
Sorry for what?” Japheem asked. He put his hand over his ear, mimicking that he hadn’t heard. “Sorry for what, Jessa Bright?”

“For
not coming to you in Seataw. For lying. For displeasing you.”

He slapped th
e cushion so hard that the frame of the sofa cracked. “
Everything
you do displeases me! It is your fault that I am laid out here, so I asked you to do something to amuse me! When I tell you to eat the food from the floor like a dog, then you eat the food from the floor like a dog. A dog doesn’t stop to think about it. A dog is happy! A dog wags its tail! A dog is grateful for its treat! Bark, dog!”

He was absolutely insane.
I barked. The anemoi crept closer and I felt its breath on my shins. I tried to back up further and hit the wall. There was nowhere else to go. Japheem ordered, “Put out your hand!”

“Japheem, no
! Please!”

“Put out your hand to t
he anemoi!”

I was going to have my hand bitten off.
The anemoi growled. Zofia watched over the top of her book, undisturbed by it; the other two still had not risen from bed. Jerking upright from his pillows, Japheem grasped my wrist and thrust it out. I screamed, expecting teeth to sink in. He was screaming too, except in laughter. Eyes wide and crazed, he said, “Pet your friend!”

Wind brushed against my knuckles.
I had balled my hand into a fist, all that I could do to protect myself. My eyes were closed in anticipation. Then Japheem whispered gently, “Open your hand, Jessa. Open your hand to pet the anemoi.”

Trembling, I forced open my fist.
The anemoi panted on my fingers like a dog. Japheem let go of my hand. “Now you will need both hands to fold my clothes. Yes! The first Jessa struggled to tend me when she only had one hand. But you don’t need all of these fingers. Which one do you think you can do without? Pick, and I will grant you this gift. Pick and say thank you, Japheem!”

In a voice barely
above a whisper, I pleaded, “Japheem, may I keep all of my fingers? Please? I would like to keep them.”

“No!
They are not your fingers. They are
my
fingers! Mine since you fell from the cliff and I choose to feed one to an anemoi! So you will pick and thank me, or I will pick and you will
still
thank me. This is what I want! Which finger do you need the least?”