Natural Consequences (43 page)

He remembered all sorts of strange things, too. He remembered lying on less comfortable surfaces than this, like the rocky ground on the road to the Holy Land and the slave pen in Rome. He remembered toiling in fields and shivering through cold nights outside Danish villages, waiting for people to go to bed so he might slip in and steal some food.

Molly and Onyx shifted from his head and feet to each take up a spot kneeling at his sides. They took his hands.

He remembered lying on a field in the spring, staring up at the sky with his belly in a terrible twist of pain and wetness. He remembered a woman who knelt beside him and held his hand as he died. Even with the coins over his eyes, it was as if he could see her clearly.

Except instead of the old Gypsy woman, he saw Onyx. Molly was there, too, kneeling at his other side… but now in his mind he couldn’t tell Onyx and the Gypsy woman apart.

They kept chanting. They each took up one of his hands, holding them palms-up to the sky in supplication. At first, his hands bore the same uneven discoloration and faint burn scars that they had for a month. Then he saw the blood and blisters from building Halla’s funeral pyre on a cold morning all by himself, and feared he might never be able to play the piano again.

No. Not the piano. Not anything. He hadn’t played a musical instrument since that time he and Wade got busted for sword-fighting with their recorders in music class in the fifth grade.

Conflicting images and sensations from his body and his mind left him feeling much like this was a vivid dream from which he might awaken any moment. He lay on his back but stood; had his eyes closed, but saw his surroundings. Molly and Onyx gripped his hands and lifted him up in the dream world, which now bore no resemblance to the springtime meadow of before
, and… “Onyx,” said Molly.

“What?”

“Your clothes.”

Alex looked. She wore the clothes of the old Gypsy woman. Molly
appeared as she always did. None of Alex’s clothes changed, either.

The two witches
exchanged a long, thoughtful look. Whatever their thoughts, they did not share them with Alex. Instead, they turned to the task at hand.

They stood on a rocky riverbank. Fog stretched all around them, thin enough to reveal the waters beyond but little more than that. Alex thought to look up
. He felt as if he might be underground somewhere. That led him to wonder where the light came from. With the coin in his mouth, he couldn’t ask.

The witches led him by the hand. “This is Acheron,” explained Molly as Onyx
resumed the chant. “We need to find the boatman.”

Alex turned his face to her, wanting to ask something. He couldn’t speak. Molly shrugged. “We’ve never been here before, either.”

They walked. The witches took care not to step near the water. Alex looked to it as they moved and felt his sorrow rise. He felt loneliness. He felt betrayal. He could remember the names.

For a time, all he heard was the chant held by Onyx and the sound of their footsteps on the cold rocks. Then he heard the soft sound of something pushing through the water. Soon, they saw the source of the sound.

The build and curves of the boat stirred old memories for Alex, but the boatman seemed familiar only as a figure out of stories told by old men. He seemed like a poor man, long unshaven and dressed in red and brown rags. Everything about him spoke of power and vitality despite great age. He pushed his boat to the shore with his ferryman’s pole and waited.

Alex watched from his spot on the shore
. He felt the coins removed from his eyes as he lay on the floor in the apartment. Onyx took the coin from his mouth, both in the apartment and on the shore. She placed them in his hand, and then the two witches took hold of his wrists and guided him up to kneel on the concrete. His eyes stayed shut there so that he might continue to see the river and the boatman.

“You need to pay him,” said Molly in his ear. “It’s only one coin for you, but two more for what was taken.”

His eyes didn’t turn to meet hers. “Won’t that mean stepping into the water?”

“Only for a few seconds,” she told him. “You need to do
that, too. But don’t stay long. Don’t get in the boat.”

“Do I say anything?”

“No. He knows.”

Swallowing his dread, Alex took the first few steps slowly. The boatman waited, not looking up and seeming utterly indifferent to the young man that approached him. Alex felt the pull of the current even at the edge of the cold water. It looked peaceful, but standing in the river he now felt its strength. Barely in the water to his knees,
he feared it could sweep him away.

“Where is your angel?” the boatman asked in an aged, severe voice. Alex froze in place for a moment, shocked somehow that the boatman spoke at all. “He should guide you. He has been with you all the other times, after the first.”

Alex didn’t know what to say. The witches hadn’t prepped him for this. “You know me?” he asked.

“I know every soul who passes,” said the boatman. “
You are not special for this. I know your companions, too. Where is your angel?”

Thoughts processed as the boatman spoke and Alex stammered. “I’m not… he isn’t with me anymore,” Alex said. Rachel hadn’t explained much more than that, but it wasn’t the sort of conversation he’d forget. “I don’t have a guardian now. But I’m not here to cross.”

“Why do you come?”

“To pay you back for what was stolen.”

He held out the coins. Slowly, the boatman reached out an open hand and waited until Alex dropped his repayment. Then he looked down at the coins in his hand and gave a satisfied nod.

His task complete, Alex turned to go. A thought occurred to him. He turned back. “It was the same angel every time?”

“Your first was a woman,” said the boatman. “After her, it was always the same man.”

The boatman said nothing more. Alex felt no desire to linger and every need to leave. Walking out proved difficult, though. The undertow of the river fought him with each step. He jabbed his ankle on a rock under the water, gasped in pain and found his eyes watering.

Everything about this hurt. It had hurt all along, but something about this simple, stupid jab at his ankle punctuated it all. After all he had endured, this last bruising proved too much. Pain shot through him, and with it came a first, unbidden and completely unnecessary tear.

Alex picked up his foot and stepped forward again, cursing himself. The pain wasn’t enough to cry over, certainly not in front of friends. It wasn’t like being shot or beaten. It wasn’t like losing a lover. He’d been through all that.

He’d been through a lot of that.

A second tear fell, and then a third. Molly and Onyx came to the edge of the water and reached out to him. They took his arms and pulled him the rest of the way out of the water, and knelt with him as he fell to his knees weeping.
He felt Molly push gently at his shoulders, indicating that he should lean forward.

Onyx
put something in his hand, both in the dream world and the apartment. He held the small silver ring tightly as he sobbed. “Who are you crying for?”

His eyes fluttered open for a brief moment. His tears fell into a bowl placed at his knees by Onyx, whose chanting had ended. “Marie,” he huffed.

“Why?”

“I never came back to her.”

She fell silent, letting him cry a moment longer, and then took the hand that held the ring. “Let it go,” Onyx said, bringing his hand to the bowl and turning it over. “She knew you wanted to come back. She knew you loved her. Let Marie go.”

He let out a heavy breath and opened his palm. The ring fell into the bowl to lie amid the drops of his tears. Though he did not wail or thrash around, his weeping only increased.

Another ring came into his hand, this one from Molly. She watched more of his tears roll down from his cheeks to fall into the bowl. “Who are you crying for?” asked Molly.

“Siobhan.”

“Why?”

“I said such awful things. She didn’t deserve any of them. She left me and I can’t blame her,” he shuddered, “but I’m still so sorry.”

Molly went through the same motions as Onyx, bringing his hand over the bowl. “She knows now,” Molly said. “She knows you loved her. Let Siobhan go.”

The ring fell into the bowl. Then it was
Onyx’s turn again.

“Who are you crying for?” she asked as she placed an earring in his hand.

“Stephanie.”

“Why?”

He inhaled sharply. “Fuckin’ bitch shacked up with fuckin’ Ted from the drugstore,” Alex mumbled with obvious anger. “Took my money from ‘Nam and married another man behind my back.”

Neither Molly nor Onyx could miss the shift in his pattern of speech. Even
amid such ritual and magical power, they couldn’t help but share an amused grin. Molly quickly got a grip on her mirth. “Let her go,” she said, turning his hand over to drop the ring in the bowl. “Just let the bitch go.”

They remained with him on the shores of Acheron and the floor of their apartment, hearing of loves lost to tragedy or, just as often, to treachery. They ignored the passage of time and hoped only that their supply of silver jewelry would hold out.

Plastic wrap covered t
he bowl in his lap so none of the tears would splash out. Alex didn’t believe it had all come from his eyes. Onyx explained that he’d had a lot of mourning to make up for, but he suspected some other magic might have been involved. Regardless, the simple practicality of plastic wrap and a rubber band over a big ceramic bowl offered a brief point of amusement amid his grief.

He held it in both hands in the back of Molly’s car all the way to the Montlake Cut, which linked Lake Union to Lake Washington. Parking so close to the university
was always a challenge, but with perseverance they found a space. Alex carried the bowl from the car to a spot halfway across the drawbridge that spanned the cut. The two witches walked beside him.

Traffic crawled by as they came to the center of the bridge. The sun had set an hour earlier, coinciding with the end of their ritual. Most of the time since then had been spent allowing Alex to come down from his emotional ordeal. He felt better now—he understood that this matter was unfinished even before Onyx told him of the next step, but his anguish had quite clearly been productive.

Molly and Onyx seemed pleased with their timing and how much they had accomplished before dusk. Alex had little sense of how much time such rituals usually took, but even he felt surprised that it was still so early.

“Samhain’s a good night for this sort of thing,” Molly told him while he unwrapped the bowl on the bridge. “The best night, really. ‘
bout time you caught a lucky break.”

He looked at her with a bit of a grin. “I’d lose track of the lucky breaks in my life if I started counting ‘em,” he said. “You both count for a bunch.”

“Yeah, well, sounds like you’ve had some crappy luck to make up for in your previous lives,” Molly shrugged. “Consistently crappy. Maybe the universe owes you this one.”

“It is kind of weird how consistent all that is,” said Onyx. “Dying from violence every single time. Always checking out young. It’s not weird to see parallels and patterns, but that’s just… more than weird,” she finished, buttoning up her long black coat against the
breeze.

“Do you remember much now?” asked Molly.

“Less than before. I know it’s there, but now it’s more like remembering books rather than experiences. Feels more distant.”

Alex faced the rail of the bridge, looking out at the water below. He cradled the bowl with his left arm so he could use his right hand. “Is there anything I’m supposed to say or do?”

“Anything you want. Whatever feels right. You could say goodbye or sorry or whatever again,” Onyx suggested, “but you kinda said all that already. It’s invested in the jewelry.”

“You’re not sending gifts to the afterlife,” added Molly. “For all we know it works out like that on the other side, but mostly the silver is just a carrier.”

He reached into the bowl, drew out a silver bracelet and looked at it for only a moment before he tossed it into the water below. The lack of ceremony seemed odd to him after all the ritual chanting and procedure, but he trusted the guidance of his friends. If they gave no instructions, he must not need any.

On occasion, he looked at a particular piece and said, “Goodbye.” At other times, he did not. He had no conscious thought as to which piece represented what, or why he would need to say anything at all. He simply did what felt right.

Finished, he upended the bowl over the side of the bridge to let the remaining water out into the canal. Alex let out a long sigh and closed his eyes.

“How do you feel?” asked Onyx.

“Better.” He considered her question further. “Relieved.” He ran his fingers along the bar of the railing.

He’d fought in Vietnam, and against the Saracens. He’d raided against the Danes. He’d had a wife leave him for a wealthier man, and another sell him to slave dealers, and another cheat on him with the village priest. It was all there, but no closer at hand than thoughts of middle school or the bike he’d ridden in fourth grade until it was stolen. He remembered losing Halla, remembered losing Siobhan, but he couldn’t be sure of their names. Memories of being cut from the football team during tryouts were much clearer.
“It’s all in pieces. Is that normal?”