The Child Eater (17 page)

And it was in Florian, on a chilly winter afternoon, with the red and green lions outside the library half covered in snow, that Matyas discovered the answer to a question he'd long ago forgotten. He was sitting at a small table Alejandre had arranged for him at the highest level, where the Masters kept the works of Florian, and on the table a book lay open. It was called
Origins of Origins
and it was, of course, by Florian. Matyas had read and in fact reread the three large volumes known simply as
Origins
, but this text was new to him. Judging by the dust on the marbled leather cover, no one had taken it down in a long time. He did not understand why, for compared to most of the Master's work, it was quite straightforward. It was written in poetry, and code, for it was Florian, after all, but still, much easier to penetrate than most. And it was short. It ran only a few pages, and would have been no more than one or two if the scribe who'd taken it down (Florian herself never wrote anything, but only dictated her teachings, so some argued that the notorious
difficulties came partly from mistakes made in the writing) had not used such large and sweeping calligraphy.

From the moment he began, Matyas realized he was reading something special, the very beginnings of the world. And then he recalled, with a small shock, a strange thing Medun had asked him, all those months ago in the Hungry Squirrel.
What would the world be like
, the wizard had said,
if you could not know for sure if the Sun would come up in the morning, or that spring would follow winter?
Matyas had found the question so absurd he'd immediately forgotten it, especially after they went on to talk about flying, and changing people into toads. Now he saw that it was true.

In the beginning, Florian wrote, the Creator brought forth seven great Trees, each with its own quality, then gave them over to seven Guardians who would use the power of the Trees to create a perfect Garden for all the humans and animals who walked upon the new and shining Earth. Instead, the Guardians turned all of existence into a game, with no rules except their own will and amusement. The intended paradise became a place of desperation and fear.

This was the world that gave birth to Joachim the Brilliant. Others before him had stumbled upon aspects of magic and tried to gain enough power to battle the Guardians. Joachim understood that this was hopeless, and instead used all his skill to enter something called the Deep Woods, where he found a mysterious figure known as the Opener. Together with the Opener, Joachim created the Tarot of Eternity.

Using the images as “Gateways,” Joachim—along with his disciple Florian—ascended to the Bright Palace of the Creator, where they begged Her to help them. And so the Creator changed the world. The Guardians retreated—“took refuge in the sky,” the text said—and the world became a set of structures, knowable and predictable, ruled, Florian wrote, by “geometry and numbers.”

Matyas read this and read it again and then got up to walk to the balcony and stare down at the various wizards and apprentices below. Najarian and some Master whom Matyas didn't know were walking silently past the statues of their predecessors. The glow of the sylph lamps lit up their robes as they moved. In the study alcoves, a new apprentice hunched over a book like a squirrel clutching a walnut. Matyas wondered suddenly if everyone knew these things, this Origin of Origins. Did all the apprentices learn it in their first year? Veil never told Matyas
anything—he had to search and search, and hope he would stumble across basic knowledge before he made some foolish mistake and everyone laughed at him.

He wanted to run from the library straight to Veil's tower refuge and shout, “Why didn't you tell me this? You're my teacher—you're supposed to tell me what I need to know.”

He didn't move. Instead, he held on to the edge of the table as if afraid to let go. He imagined Veil saying, “Why should I tell you things when you can discover them for yourself?” But it was not fear of what Veil might say that kept him there. No, there was something in the text itself, more a feeling than anything concrete. Was this what Veil had meant by
aspects
?

Because he had become a seeker, he tried to follow the feeling. The
Origin of Origins
stated that Joachim and Florian ascended in the “Chariot of Eternity.” But as Matyas cast his mind back over the words—for he had learned the skill of remembering whole pages, word for word—he realized that here and there the text hinted that someone else had traveled with them. “We three” it said at one point, and, “Another”—the very word Veil had used, with distaste and even fear. When Matyas had first read these phrases he'd assumed they were scribal errors, but now, as he thought on them, he knew they were something else, a dark secret that disturbed him even to think about it.

Maybe he should ask Veil about
this
, he told himself. “Who was the Other?” he imagined himself shouting. “Who traveled with Joachim and Florian?” But he knew he wouldn't, for just the thought of it somehow made him so dizzy he might have fallen over the edge of the balcony if he had not been holding on to the table. When the weakness passed, he closed the book and returned it to its place on the shelves.

A few times during the next days, he thought briefly of the third traveler, someone who was not supposed to exist. Each time the idea seemed to stay less in his mind, until finally he simply forgot about it entirely.

Far from driving him away from Florian, however, the strange experience seemed to intensify his urge to understand her more elaborate teachings, as if to prove to himself that he had not abandoned her. He continued to read the same passages over and over, now in both the tower and the library, as if they might change by where he read them.

And then one afternoon, after all that study, he was standing in the courtyard, with his arms full of wood, when someone said something
about the Moon caught on Veil's tower. He looked up, and yes, the crescent Moon appeared on its side right above the tower. He stared and stared at it, remembering a passage in Florian, one of those he'd never understood, describing how “the Moon sings its horns on the Gate of Stone.”

Suddenly Veil's tower lit up with color, colors he had never seen before, all up and down the stones, every one a different color. Veil's tower wasn't made of stone at all, it rose on color after color, singing colors, harmonies never heard before because they were never possible until this moment, until Matyas could see them and hear them.

He stared at the sky and saw that it went on and on, layer upon layer of impossible colors that had never existed, and then he held up his hands and they were made of color and song. He looked down at the blazing sticks of color that lay at his feet where they'd fallen, and then the ground itself, and he realized that what had looked like solid dirt and stone now revealed itself as vast lattices and harmonies of color, reds beyond red and blues hidden inside blue, all of them singing to each other, singing to Matyas, singing
in
Matyas, singing in the world, in every face. This was the song the Kallistocha had sung, hidden in the dark colorless trees, trapped there by the warriors of Heaven, yet still able to sing.

Matyas held up his hands, fingers spread wide, and color and song flowed over the courtyard, and the statues, the stone lions, were revealed as glory upon glory. Color poured from his fingers and his eyes directly into the open mouths of all the wavy, shimmery forms that gathered around him. He was teaching now, giving truth, and didn't even know it at first, until he detected, beyond the figures sitting in the dirt, Lukhanan and Berias and Lord Olan, the only ones who had not surrendered their fixed forms to shifting harmonies of music and color. Only now Olan slid away from the other two and sat down, and instantly all his rigidity dissolved into brightness. Matyas laughed, and the sky rippled out through the spheres of the planets, and they were not shells surrounding the dead Earth but songs and shouts, calling to each other in layers and layers of harmonic color.

He saw lights amid the lights. Bright, sharp dots that hovered between the pillars, that
fitted
themselves among the listeners. The Splendor had come—not to help him, or protect him, but to listen. To learn.

Matyas had no idea how long it all lasted, for what he saw and heard changed time as well, so that instead of a steady flow it swirled and rose and fell and turned back on itself and flared up and died down.

Then suddenly, in the midst of everything, he saw a face: a fixed, hard form, bone-white, eyes like frozen fire. He could not look at it, he had never seen anything so terrifying, the end of all songs.
Another
. And so he closed his eyes, and turned his head, and when he dared to look again the world had returned.

Once more Matyas stood in the courtyard, ringed all around by layers of students, and yes, teachers. He tried to speak but found he was shaking too hard. What would they do to him? He realized, only now, that he had taken it on himself to lecture to the
wizards
—the Masters—as if they were just a group of stumbling apprentices. Maybe he should run for the tower, ask Veil to protect him. He didn't dare look at them and so he bent down to pick up a piece of wood.

Before he could touch it, however, one of the apprentices—Alejandre, he realized, the boy from the library—grabbed it and held it tight. “Please,” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper, “let me carry this for you.” Matyas only stared at him. Then another picked up a stick, and another, until finally only one long rod of wood remained. Before one of the apprentices could grab it, Horekh himself stepped forward, the master of the library. He bent down and lifted the wood into his bony swollen arms. “Please,” he said “we may not enter the tower, but let us walk with you to the door. Honor us that we may carry your burden.”

Matyas found himself shaking so much he could hardly move, let alone speak, so he just nodded and walked the twenty or so paces to Veil's door, with the entire school flowing behind him. There he held out his arms for each one to place the wood like an offering to an oracle, or even a god. Matyas looked at them all, standing silent and still. When Horekh held the door for him he nodded once more and turned to go inside.

And that's when the shouting began. “Matyas!” they cried, “Matyas!” And then, “Master Matyas! Master Matyas!”

Somehow he made it up the stairs, even held on to the wood, though his whole body had dissolved, not into color and song, but only tears. Veil was waiting for him. Frightened she would scold him for his arrogance, or even worse, simply ignore him, he didn't speak or move. Without effort, it appeared, she lifted the wood from his arms and set it down before the small iron stove. Then she turned to him and smiled. “Florian is very pleased,” she said. “She has waited a long time for this.”

Neither of them mentioned the fact that Master Florian had died more than two thousand years before Matyas was even born.

Later in his life, Jack Wisdom would think of March 2 as the day he doomed his son. It was a Saturday, a month after Simon's birthday. Simon was on a play date at Jerry Lowe's house, and Jack was in a bad mood. The fact is, he'd been in a bad mood a lot lately, which made him feel even worse because Simon was doing so great, and shouldn't that be all that mattered? Sometimes Jack thought there was something wrong with him—worrying about work, because that's all it was, really, when he should be showing his son how proud he was, and happy. Work. Pressure and meaningless crises.

Except—there was an aspect about this crisis that disturbed Jack, and not least because it involved Simon.

Charlie, Jack's boss, had sent him home this weekend with a thick file that might as well have been marked “Danger! Massive Headache!” since that was what it had been for weeks, for anyone who had to deal with it. But the fact that Charlie had given it to Jack Wisdom to take home, well, that was more than just a headache. Now Jack just sat at the dining room table where Simon liked to do his homework and stared at the spread-out papers, occasionally writing some notes on a yellow legal pad, then angrily crossing them out. Charlie Perkins had asked Jack to work on the Kransky file for one reason only, and it wasn't Jack's ability
to analyze. It wasn't even Jack he wanted at all, it was Simon, though Charlie had no way to know that.

Jack stared out of the window. A few trees were just starting to sprout new leaves, the fragile early signs of spring. Just one good ice storm and all that fresh life would come crashing down, probably taking out the power lines at the same time. Jack felt cold suddenly, dressed in what Simon liked to call his play clothes, old jeans and a blue hoodie with torn elbows. He should get rid of it, he knew, but he'd torn it when he was teaching Simon to ride a bike and inadvertently demonstrated how to fall off. Simon's laughter had been so infectious it hadn't even hurt.

Jack wished Simon was home, with him, right now. He was thrilled that his boy was doing normal things again, like play dates, but he missed him. And it would be a good excuse to do something fun, play catch, go to a movie, anything besides stare at that damn file.

It had started some two months earlier, ironically right around the time Simon began to emerge from his “slump,” as Jack liked to think of that terrible period. Jack's company, Joyride Automotive Supplies, had taken a daring turn, moving from relatively simple devices like windshield wipers that contoured more closely to the glass to a whole new kind of seat belt. Using sensor chips located up and down the padded straps, the “intelligent” belts would adjust to a person's body, moving higher or lower, tightening or loosening as necessary. It was the first improvement in seat belts since the shoulder strap (“Bringing seat belts out of the Dark Ages,” Charlie liked to say), and it would make or break the company. Everything was going well, no major glitches, good safety testing, and most important, some early interest from one of the smaller Japanese companies. And then one day, a letter arrived.

It came in one of those fancy envelopes that immediately said “lawyer” even before you looked at the return address. In this case, the counselor was a woman named Katherine Dunne, from a firm called Prescott and Bigelow, out of Boston. Prescott and Bigelow, it appeared, were patent specialists, and according to Ms. Dunne, Joyride's seatbelt design infringed on the patent of a certain Mark Kransky, an “independent inventor” who lived in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and who, according to the letter, had spent fifteen years perfecting his “Comfort Strap” digital seatbelt system.

The letter had thrown things into an uproar. Joyride had always been a modest company, with a good history of using technical analysis to
improve standard products—like the windshield wipers—but the seatbelt idea was on a whole other level. If it was blocked, or they somehow had to bring in this Kransky, well, no one knew what would happen.

Jack made himself a cup of coffee, then leaned against the kitchen counter, holding the mug in his hand without drinking from it. He didn't want to return to the table but he couldn't stop staring at the file. Originally Charlie had brought Jack in to lead the team working on the analysis of Kransky's patent. There were similarities, Jack reported, though not a complete match. And that was it, Jack had thought. His part was finished. Now it was up to the lawyers to determine the company's risk and liability. Jack expected to return to his regular work. Like everyone else in the company, he was worried about their future, but at least it was out of his hands.

Only, Charlie kept consulting him, talking about the case, complaining how it was driving him crazy, showing him the lawyer's letters and emails, asking him, over coffee and bagels in the morning, or Chinese food at lunch, “What do you think, Jack? What should we do?” At first, Jack was flattered, if a bit confused. He was an analyst. Business decisions, certainly legal matters, were not his area. He tried to tell himself it was because he'd been around so long, he and Charlie had seen the company grow together. But he knew that wasn't it. He knew exactly what Charlie wanted, even though Charlie himself didn't. Charlie hoped to call on a special talent his friend Jack Wisdom had. What he didn't know was that the talent was Jack's son.

The lawyers had thrown it right back on Charlie. They could resist Kransky's claim, let it go to court, and based on Jack's analysis of the design differences they stood a good chance of winning. But the costs would spiral up, and the case might delay production enough to scare off the market. Or they could try to buy out Kransky's patent and hope his fee wouldn't greatly lengthen the time it took to start making a profit.

On the Friday before Simon's play date at Jerry's house, Charlie called Jack into his office. As soon as Jack saw the file on his boss' desk, he knew what was about to happen. Ironic, he would later think, and imagined saying to someone, no one, “I must have been psychic.”

Charlie, the kind of rounded, middle-aged man who talked constantly of how he needed to work out, gestured with a half-eaten chocolate doughnut at the file. “This thing is driving me nuts.” And after a moment, “Maybe you can figure out what we should do.”

Jack wanted to run from the office. Instead, he just said, “I'm not a lawyer, Charlie. I gave you my analysis, but I can't tell you what to do with it.”

Charlie's head rocked up and down. “Yeah, yeah, sure. Of course. But you know how you used to come up with answers when it came down to a coin-toss? I got to tell you, Jack, this is one of those times.”

So there it was. What they needed, what Charlie was talking about, was Rebecca. Jack remembered how he used to come home worried about something at work, some special problem that he might casually mention, maybe at dinner, or over a glass of wine. A coin-toss problem. And then the next day, maybe at breakfast, Bec would casually make a suggestion. They both knew what was happening, even if neither of them wanted to spell it out.

Until the crisis with the patent, Jack didn't even know that Charlie had remembered those “coin-toss” moments. The problem was, Jack had never told his boss it wasn't him, it was his wife. And now Rebecca was gone, so that was that.

Except, of course, there was Simon.

“Damn it!” Jack shouted out loud to his empty kitchen. “What the hell is wrong with me?” All those terrible months, all that suffering, and now Simon was finally coming out of it—all the
years
, really, of trying to protect his precious boy from his mother's sickness—how could he think, even for a second, of risking putting him back into it?

Only, did Simon have to know? Jack would never tell him to read anyone's mind, or to look into the future or anything so blatant, so
psychic
. But suppose it was a game? Jack could say he wanted to show Simon what Daddy did at work. Lay out the pages, describe the situation—he could make it like a fairy tale, with Kransky as the ogre. He smiled. Better make it an Xbox game, with Kransky an alien or something. He could say, “You're Charlie, facing the Kransky Monster. What do you do? How do you defeat him?” Maybe Jack could tell Simon he used to play this kind of game with Simon's mom.

Jack put down his coffee cup and began pacing the kitchen. It would be so easy. Simon wouldn't even realize he was “cheating,” as he called it. But what would it do to him? What would it open up? He'd made so much progress, just the fact that he had friends again.

Could it help him in some way?
Bullshit
, Jack told himself. He was trying to help himself. Charlie would give him a bonus (
I could take
Simon to Disney World
), maybe even a share of the company (
Simon would be all set for college
).

He stared out of the window, only to see a pair of squirrels on their hind legs facing the house, as if they were staring back at him. Breathing hard, he opened the back door and yelled, “Get out of here!” as he made a shooing gesture with his left arm. Obediently, the squirrels dashed off and Jack was left feeling like an idiot. He hadn't reacted that way to squirrels in years.

Back in the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator to stare at some leftover spaghetti and meatballs, then slammed the door shut. Jack smiled, thinking of how Simon sometimes came home from school and looked into the fridge only to complain there was nothing “cool” to eat. He glanced back at the patent papers, shook his head. It would be so easy. He'd pick Simon up, take him home, or maybe out for pizza, and then show him the papers.

“Shit!” Jack said. He needed to distract himself.

A minute later, he found himself in his son's room. He smiled, took a deep breath and smelled the faint presence of his boy. There was the rumpled cowboy blanket (he could never get Simon to make his bed properly), Mr. Axle, the mechanic doll holding a felt wrench that Simon had had since he was three, and the elephant Jack's mom had given Simon. Schoolbooks and a few papers lay scattered over the small oak desk under a poster of a rock group in ridiculous outfits. A few comics were strewn across the floor, overshadowed by a stack of adventure books.

He bent down to pick up one of the books, a sea story called
The Tattooed Parrot
, and as he did so he spotted the cover of a wooden box under the bed. He pulled it out and saw to his surprise and delight that it contained a bunch of Simon's old toys. Jack had no idea he had kept them. He grinned as he picked up a couple of building blocks, then the green snap-on driver of a fire engine. He remembered playing with Simon in the living room when Simon was three, how Jack tried to make fire engine sounds, only to have his son roll his eyes and show him how it was done. Amazingly, Simon really did sound just like a fire siren. Jack smiled again. This was exactly what he needed.

Then he saw the blue cloth, and his stomach wrenched before he even realized what it was. By the time he'd begun to unwrap it he knew, but prayed he was wrong. There they were, worn and bent, even a little food-stained. Strawberry jam. Simon's favorite snack.

How the hell could they be there? Where had Simon found them? Jesus, Jack thought, when Simon was supposed to be doing his homework, or even playing his
Star Wars
game, or when Jack saw the flashlight and thought he was sneaking a few extra minutes with a book, Simon was looking at Tarot cards! After everything Jack had done to protect his child—just when he thought they were safe—this
infection
—

How was it possible? Jack remembered his frantic search through the house after the funeral. All he'd wanted was to find the cards and tear them up. She must have hidden them somewhere, like a goddamn time bomb. And now it had gone off. Suddenly he remembered that one word she'd painted all across the living room wall just before the aneurysm burst in her brain. “Remember!” Oh, he remembered all right. He remembered Rebecca holding their son in a goddamn fire. He remembered pulling Simon back before any harm was done. Now he had to do it again, save his boy from a sickness. His mother's sickness.

He wanted to run back downstairs, go and fetch Simon from whatever the hell he was doing with Jerry and wave the cards in his face. He wanted to scream at him, “Where did you get this . . . this
garbage
?”

Instead, he grabbed whole bunches of them and tore them in half. He took the cards and the cloth and stomped downstairs to throw them in the cold fireplace. It took him three tries to light a match and hold it steady enough to set them on fire. He sat on the floor and cried as he watched first Rebecca's cards and then her scarf disappear into fire and dust. Then for a long time he just stared at the ashes.

An odd memory came into his mind. He and Bec were at Lake Candlewick, sitting at a picnic table at sunset, drinking cheap red “vino” from paper cups and watching the light play on the water, when for no reason Jack had asked, “What would happen if you threw your Tarot cards into the water?”

He regretted it as soon as he'd said it, for he expected her to get angry. Or maybe she'd laugh and say she'd go and buy a new set. Instead, she stared at the water and said, “The Tarot of Eternity cannot be destroyed.”

“What?”

Suddenly Rebecca had laughed, then covered her face in mock embarrassment. “Oh God,” she said. “I just did that awful professional psychic thing, didn't I? Mystic pronouncements. Ponderous voice.” She laughed again. “Sorry. I hereby promise not to do any more of that.”

Now, years later, Jack stood up from the fireplace and said out loud, “Yeah, well, I think they're finally destroyed this time, Bec.” He went into the kitchen to get a bottle of beer, shoved the damn Kransky file aside and sat down to drink, and stare at nothing.

He was still there, a second beer in his hand, when Carla Lowe called, her voice trembling with bad news. “It's Simon,” she said. “I don't know what happened. Everything was fine. Really. The boys were playing that Conqueror game and suddenly Simon just yelled and fell over. I'm so sorry, Jack. They were only playing a game. Really.”