Phantom

 

PHANTOM QUEEN

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Lao Tzu

 

Almost a ghost, I linger near the junction of Commercial Drive and East Fourth. Wrapping myself in shades of black and gray, I melt into the edges of perception, becoming one with the mists and shadow and watch the scene unfold. Pay no mind to the water, I tell myself. Your orthotics will survive, and your support hose will dry. No need to cry over wet ankles. Everyone knows, no matter the season, that Vancouver is fickle. If you aren’t prepared to carry an umbrella then you are a fool or a tourist.

Balancing my serpent-headed umbrella on my shoulder I squint through the thickening sheet of water. A street corner prophet stands, seemingly oblivious of the rain, stands with palms uplifted. Even without a microphone his voice booms. “Luke 13: ‘But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’ Whether it’s fire, or flood, or disease, or gunshot you will die if you don’t change your ways. Repent your love of things. Give up your lies. Tear down your false idols.” Fired by passion, he strafes the few passersby with his words. “I was a sinner once. I lied. I cheated. I sold drugs to my friends, and slept with whores. I was like you, then I found God, and knew that I was doomed to burn in the fires of Satan’s pit unless I changed my ways.”

Eyes cast to the side, the few pre-rush-hour pedestrians quicken their steps to leave God’s soldier in their wake. No one lingers. A sausage vendor scrambles to don a chin-to-ankle raincoat. Closing the lid to his barbecue, he quenches the cloying scent of smoking fat. Not surprising, a nearby cancer society volunteer has abandoned the street for the shelter of a seedy but dry restaurant. Rain and repentance are not good salesmen, and his dinner tonight isn’t dependent on sticking out the wet. Close on his heels is a drummer, who packs his sticks into his nesting cans, before heading down the street toward Grandview and the sky train station. He has given up his duel with the street corner prophet whose only concession to the deluge is to move closer to the wall of a strange little shop.

Scrolling gold letters scribe “The Takla Makhan, A Curiosity Shop for Wandering Souls” across crackled turquoise and navy paint. Around the outside edge, antique curlicues of wood merge with the relief figure of a raven-winged woman. Through the looking glass window, even from a street’s width distance, strange antiquities, luxurious fabrics, and odd commodities seduce the eyes of casual passers-by. The sombrero-wearing-skeleton-statue, jazzing it up on a saxophone, seems as in place as the ornate black and gold lyre clock that runs backwards. The only thing out of place is the closed sign on the door.

Droplets bead my eyelashes before sluicing down the cracked creek beds of my cheeks. In a downpour like this one, I admit to myself, an umbrella is a formality only.  Thankfully, I have foregone the glamor of a younger woman, preferring instead the androgynous guise of old age.

“Phhh! Goddess-be-damned. Rain!” My companion shoots a withering glance in my direction, and lifts his feet out of a rising tidal pool. Shuffling closer to the building edge, his disgust continues to rumble from his deep chest while steam seeps steadily from beneath his shaggy coat.

Rain is my friend, but not Mori’s. “What do you want me to do?” I glance briefly into his feral eye then return my attention to the street. “You were born of the sea. Why shrink from a little bit of water now?” Still, after so many years together, his gaze is disturbing. Like an exploding star it seeks to demolish my composure. Things change, it glares.

“Turn it to a mist. Dry it up. Make it stop.” Commands issue from his mouth in graveled bursts. Mori is a being of few words. Again, I flicker my eyes away from the street. This time I don’t bother to hide my smile, as a small car crests a puddle and deposits a wave of gritty water at his feet.  They are huge by human standards. Alien. Knobby boulders meant to carry the weight of the world curl delicately away from the encroaching flood.

“If you had listened and changed into a more human form we could have found you some boots.” Ignoring the irony of chastising a monster about inappropriate footwear in a rainstorm, I continue, “Time is running out. I can feel it.”

“Mmm,” he grunts. Still worrying his feet onto dry ground, he barely acknowledges my concern. His one eye is turned away from me. Maybe he is contemplating the street corner prophet who is still elucidating the many levels of hell we are all destined for. Mori’s other eye, an empty socket in the midst of a crescent scar, keeps his thoughts a secret. Not that I am an expert at reading his mind. As ciphers go, Mori is an unbreakable code.

My arthritis twinges unspoken sympathy with his dilemma. Striving to ignore the growing ache in my lower back, I shrug my shoulders and stretch out my neck. “Maybe,” I allow, “this wasn’t such a good idea.” Damp cloth from my water resistant jacket kisses my neck. It’s a cold fish of an embrace. “Taking form like this.” Hesitating, I lift my wrist to contemplate the frail hand that is attached. Whisper thin, the skin over lacing bone, is pale and translucent. Blue veins, the secondary highways of life, dilate and contract with each beat of my heart. “Curious. When I was alive, I never noticed how intricately precise are the mechanics of living.”

“You say that every time,” Mori observes. He has given up on finding high ground, and has resigned himself to the wet. Like a gigantic house cat, he simply occupies the space with slitted eye, and hunched shoulders.  Gray features settling into rocky fortitude, he no longer bothers to acknowledge the rain. It no longer exists.

My amusement drains as quickly as it arose. “Really?” It’s funny, I think, how blood and acid can rush to your stomach to create a cauldron of uncertainty. Squelching closer, I lay my hand upon his arm. Beneath my fingers wet mammoth hair bristles over bulging muscle. “I say it? Every time?”

Rain continues to patter on the street. Streams have expanded into rivers, while the traffic picks up with end-of-day business. Pedestrians swim past, caught in their own ghostly migrations, too busy to notice us. At first, Mori doesn’t respond. In spite of the pressure of my fingertips against his bicep, he remains silent, so I search my own memory instead.

When was the last time that I stood on a street like this one? Waiting. And what was I waiting for? A familiar feeling of expectation rises within me. Warm. Bubbling. Verdant. It floods my heart, overflows my ventricles, and cascades through my internal organs like the first glacier melt of spring. Within my crone’s body I feel cells, too long dry from winter, plump with the milky-teal essence of mountains.

Sensation teases me into awareness, but memory is elusive. A fabric of mist shrouds my mind. Already, the past is a fading dream, and the futures are too numerous to predict. In this body, all I have is this moment. Even though it is an elusive comfort, I allow myself to draw back into the shelter of Mori’s shadow. Goddess-given, he is constant, a fixed value in a changing landscape. I know him, I think, with infallible certainty, even when all else is a blank.

“Every time we take shape, you say the same thing,” Mori finally responds. Still he doesn’t look at me. His gaze is centered upon the rain-speckled river of Commercial Drive. For a minute at least, the surface is smooth. The streetlight at the corner waits to turn. Then, cars will resume their upstream migration. “Human form is the worst for messing with you. You know that, but still, you keep choosing it.” He blinks slowly. Granite features reveal nothing, nor does he bother to grace me with any gesture of commiseration.

It is a fact. I accept it with my flesh and my borrowed bones. Ancient, dried to almost dust flesh is a gift even when I recall no other existence. “But you remember,” I prod. “You know why I chose this form.”

Fresh as the rain, my inquiry washes against Mori’s enigmatic form.  Silence is my only answer. Like a petulant child’s, my fingers tug on his forearm. Against the vasaline smooth skin of old age, his coat is coarse, almost abrasive. Upon closer examination, I can see that it is not mammoth hair at all. Fine, silver-grey, stronger-than-steel fibers lie flat beneath my hand. Yet I know, now that I am clearly seeing this coat, that those filaments are as sharp as porcupine quills and as deadly as poisoned darts. “Like something out of a nightmare,” I murmur.

“You’ve said that before, too,” he responds wryly. Still, inscrutable as a one-eyed Ozymandias, he continues to survey the street rather than look at me.

Impatience rises. Before I can stop myself I leverage my body against his, hoping to force a communion of sorts. It’s a mistake. My five foot, five inches, eighty-year-old frame is dwarfed. Barely reaching his chest, all I have accomplished is to swing myself into the drip of the roof edge. Now, water trickling down my still-rain-damp back, I stare at the two rows of cogs holding the edges of his jacket together. Like clockwork pieces, they slowly rotate, clicking softly each time one tooth connects into the socket of another.

“Why am I here?” Even to my own ears, my voice is feeble. More so, is my fist. In my mind, I strike adder quick. In reality, my hand pummels his chest with the strength of a no-see-um.  Human frail, I quickly regret my thoughtless action. It is like pounding upon the door of a graphene vault. My already sore knuckles swell to the size of walnuts, and my question is still unanswered.

I feel him shift. Finally, he looks at me though I cannot meet his gaze. Too close. My neck cannot crane far enough back to scan his height. Perhaps that is a good thing. Although blind, I sense the laser heat. His voice is a low snarl. “You wanted it this way. Not me.” He lifts his hand into my view. Igneus sharp, his nails are pre-historic weapons. His wrist, skinned with hardened lava, peeks out from beneath the cuff of his massive coat. I can just see the circlet, a braid of energy, which confines his wrist.

Without thinking, I slip my hand beneath the cavernous cuff to investigate the odd bracelet. “What is it?” I ask, even though the answer nestles into my mind of its own accord.

Before he can respond, the mirror calm moment is interrupted by the squeal of breaks and raised voices.  Across the street, just in front of the street corner prophet, a message has fallen from the sky. She is face down, thankfully. Unmoving. A dark pool of blood seeps from beneath her body to mix with the rain rivers. Clear and red, clear and red, the streamlets run. Half on the sidewalk, half on the street her life rushes down stream.

“Jesus!” the sausage vender yelps from beneath his yellow umbrella, as he fumbles for his cell phone.  Leaning against the door of his car, the stunned driver of a Ford Focus averts his eyes from the horror. Swallows the lump threatening to rise in his throat. Even from our vantage point, I can tell that he is shaken. Behind him, the prophet scrambles to collect his milk crate and backpack then fades into the collecting crowd of onlookers. They give way automatically.

Mori’s only response is a terse grunt. Shrugging me away, he pulls the cuff back over his wrist and stills his breathing. No one would guess from his deliberately relaxed posture that he is close to killing me. I can’t even blame him. If it weren’t for that glowing bracelet I would be dead. Not like this limbo of emergence, either, but really dead. The kind of dead where you don’t come back, because the atoms that make you who you are, are blown to smithereens. And then the smithereens are demolished.

Ironically, there really isn’t much to say when you realize your only companion wants you dead for reasons he won’t disclose, and that you can only sense as half seen shadows in the back of your mind.

“What do you think happened?” It’s not just idle curiosity that provokes me into pursuing a conversation about the woman. Something about the corpse, for surely she has to be dead, niggles at me. If only I could part the fog that has taken root in my brain. “Is this why we’re here?”

Mori turns the searchlight that is his eye upon me, but before he speaks I know the answer. She is not. Although familiar, she is not who we are here for. This knowledge strikes a chord in my chest, yet still, I feel a compulsion to chronicle the moment, to protect this memory against the insipient creep of mortality.

Spectre thin, my hands rise of their own accord. Mating will with action, I hold them steady in front of my face while the air takes shape. Molecules gather between my fingers. They grow heavy. Full. From my skeletal matter emerges a camera, a Canon Rebel, with a telephoto lens. Although suitable for my task, it is an ancient device made of hard, black plastic. A relic, but my hands tell me I’ve held it before. Automatically, I flip the switch, focus the lens, and –

“What are you doing?”

Mori’s question jostles my concentration. The first photo is blurry, and motion lines trail behind the people like comet tails. Taking a deep breath, I focus again. Steady, I whisper to myself, then, “What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m taking pictures.”

“Why?” Beyond terse this time.

The answer does not take form as easily as the Rebel. Biting my upper lip, I pause to consider the question. Logically, I know that this woman’s fate has nothing to do with myself. Still, there is something about her motionless body that I need to record. In the end, I simply say, “I want to remember this.”

Mori sighs. It is the most human sound I have heard emerge from his lips. Weary, even. “You will delete them. You always do.”

For a moment, his words tangle in my fingers. As much I would like to believe otherwise, I know that he speaks the truth. Lowering the camera, I scroll through the viewfinder. In spite of the rain, my second and third photos are crisp. In the digital window, police cars arrive along with a news van. A few curious pedestrians linger behind yellow tape to watch the gathering of evidence. “They’re good,” I state. “Maybe I’ll keep them this time.” Despite the confidence in my voice, however, I am doubtful. Good, yes, but already I can see the colours fading, leaching into muted shades of grey and brown.

“Maybe,” he concedes, shrugging his shoulders. “We’ll see.” Growing impatient with the conversation, his attention veers away from me. Although a leviathan, his movements are coiled simplicity. One moment, he is resting. The next, he is alert. Into my head springs the image of a beast scenting the air. Each muscle and sinew is devoted to the task while the spines of his mammoth coat quiver, rising and falling with his breath. Finally, his eye beads and hones in on a woman across the street.

Beneath the carved, wooden sign of the curiosity shop, she lingers, caught in reflection. Attractive in the way of the urban undead, she absently brushes gold-brown bangs away from a bone-white face. In contrast, the scarlet wool of her coat declares her one of the living. She hesitates. Indecision flashes across her face.

I am not superstitious. Nor am I bound by the mundane. Teetering between the darkness of my human form and the dawning light of comprehension, I realize that there is a purpose to being on this particular street corner.  On first sight of the artist, the myriad star trails of future events begin to narrow. Although I do not know why she is familiar, or where she has come from, or when we crossed paths before I understand, now, that this is a necessary crossroad.

Beside me, Mori crouches, and a shiver of primordial anticipation ripples through the air between us. Poised on the edge of attack, he flexes his claws. They snick with the metallic precision of titanium. Gone is the mocking companion of minutes before. In its place is the berserker I had glimpsed in the recesses of his eye.

Stepping away from the growing threat of his shadow, I caution him to have patience. “Not yet,” I murmur, even though I am still not certain what yet will entail. It is with growing prescience, however, that I prepare for his refusal to comply. It comes as a vicious twist of pain that shoots from my wrist, up my arm and into my heart. A braid of energy, similar to the one that I detected encircling Mori’s wrist, is also bound around mine.

Arthritis and old age rivet me to the sidewalk, while the cogs affixed to Mori’s chest whir with increasing intensity. Blunt metallic teeth sharpen into canines that bite into the grooves of time.

My bones quake.

Flesh peels away from sinew like bark on a birch tree. Still, the pressure increases. Along the thread of pain, follows the slice of knowledge that this turn of events has happened before. In the dark, in the cold we stood at the dawn of time. Toe to toe, fang to falcata, claw to claymore, Mori and I fought, on the green plains by the sea. There, amidst the rot of fallen flesh we grappled. For the first time.

The first time the rain hung in the air, as if the ocean itself had abandoned its bed for warfare. I remember, in a moment of clarity, how my lungs bubbled with each breath. How, gasping, I scrambled over rocks slippery with blood and brume. In the sea fog, I was alone, even though an arm’s length away, my brothers and sisters raised their voices against the giants of the sea, Mori’s own army.  Naked, save for our swords and our courage, we crept forward into the darkness.

I had trained for that day my whole life, spending countless hours in the circle lunging, parrying, thrusting learning how to keep my enemy at arm’s length. Then, at my king-fennid’s command, throwing aside my falcata to grip my opponent with bare fingers and straining muscles. Train as if your life depended on it, was the motto of the fian, and to drive this lesson home we practiced with battle-sharpened swords and murderous intent. It was my hope to return to the sun with many heads tied about my waist to declare my victory.

On that day, however, I was an untested fennid with no trophies at my side to instill fear in my enemies. Even worse, as I crept through the gloom into the heart of Fomor my courage clotted in my veins. Only blind faith in my king-fennid kept me seeking the clang of iron. No training or fireside stories could have prepared me for the Fomoraig, however.

When the fog finally cleared, he was there, poised over the body of my fennid-mate. I could see that life had crept from my brother’s limbs for he dangled like a trinket in the sea-demon’s hands. Looking at me all-knowing, the Fomoraig tore the head from my comrade’s shoulders, then crunched it between his teeth. Dark and fearsome, the giant tossed my fennid-mate’s empty bones aside and closed the thirty paces between us in a single stride. Two eyes glowing and nostrils flaring, he scented my fear.

Time, as I know it, collapses. While agony burns away the protective mists of forgetfulness, Mori presses his advantage. Gears whirring and poisoned coat flaring, he tightens the noose that binds us. Like the first time, my breath strangles in my chest. I should know better, I think, than to believe he is safe. Stinking and weak I stumble into the wall of building or rock ledge. I’m not sure. War zone and city street fuse, as then and now merge with nightmare veracity.

Tightening numb fingers, I ease into fighting stance and will my raven-hilted falcata into being. Offhand tucked to chest. Wrist loose. Weight light.

Look for an advantage. Slash.

Back away.

Attack. Again.

Ignore your aching hip. Breathe.

I dance back from the slash of prehistoric nails then dart forward to jab the collateral ligaments. Even giants fall when their knees are taken out from under them. Duck and turn. Hit hard. Hit again the patella. Breathe. Focus. Control the fear. Pay no attention to your aching arm, your shrieking legs, your burning chest.

It is like attacking the ocean. Each wound closes against itself, and the waves grow fiercer as I grow weaker. Mori’s eyes glow like banshee lanterns sucking the will from my aging limbs. He has me in a grip tighter than life itself without laying a finger on me. My sword, now mundane umbrella, falls. Defense is forgotten. Breath is paralyzed. Whether it is the Fomorii plain or Commercial Drive doesn’t matter. I am a puny old woman in the grasp of a titan and the piss stench of courage leaks from between my legs.

Not even my king-fennid’s training can save me as Mori’s invading energy slithers through my heart, up my carotid artery into my brain, and wraps itself around my hypothalamus. This is what kept the world in darkness so many eons ago. This is what the fian vowed to defeat. Our enemies, the sea giants, tasted our blood and fed on our fear. My feeble hands reach beneath Mori’s coat to press the median nerve above his collarbone. Anything to disrupt his attention. Anything to break his hold. But I might as well be prodding stone. Relentlessly, he strips away the mists until I drown in a flood of past memories and future possibilities. I understand, at last, that I have stopped along the arrow of time often. Stretching infinitely in both directions, my lives are a tangled mesh of connecting futures and past events.

Jabbing my stiffened knuckles into Mori’s trachea is useless. I cannot escape his grip or the deluge of emotion. Neither kicking my legs, nor clawing for respite will stem the tide. Finally, choking on my own hopelessness, my struggle ends. Perhaps it is the same for all drowning victims, this feeling of peace just before death.

Only when my head sinks beneath the surface of consciousness do I see the truth within the truth. The line that binds me to Mori, also binds Mori to me. This is what I carry to the depths with me. Like an anchor it draws me down, through the skeletons of past lives, until I reach the bottom of the primordial sea. There, in the dark, my questing hand discovers the stone that fits perfectly into my palm.

On the green plain, on Commercial Drive, on the myriad sets of my past lives I cock my arm, spin on my heel, and cast the stone. With it I direct all that is left of me so that I become one with the small piece of gray matter that speeds along the line of thought connecting me to my killer. This time I do not look away when the rock gouges out the Fomoraig’s eye, and he recoils with a howl.

Gravely wounded the demon topples to his knees, while I pounce on my advantage. Ripping the silver shackle from my heart, I loop it about Mori’s neck. Razor thin, it is the perfect garrote, and I remember how many times I have wanted him dead.

Before I can execute the final act, however, a mob descends from a city bus right into the midst of Mori’s demise. At this time of day, there is a steady stream of TransLink chariots delivering their cargo of texting stiffs. Not even a murder will halt the homeward shuffle. Tossed amidst a polyglot of English, Latin American and East Indian syllables Mori regains his composure first. Despite a muttered reproach to “move on” we remain fixed to the sidewalk. In the end, with jostled shoulders and silent glares, the host parts around us.

“Damn.” Against my will, the silven garotte wrapped around Mori’s throat loses substance. Determined, I tighten my grip. His skull tied about my waist is the only thought I allow. If the Goddess is kind, she will give me this.

“If the Goddess is kind, she would kill us both,” Mori rumbles, “but -” He jerks his chin at the street and there is no need for him to finish. Relentlessly, the noose separates then retracts. One end slithers beneath Mori’s coat to take up residence around his wrist. The other returns to my heart.

Reluctantly, I let my hands fall to my sides. Killing my fennid-mate, alone, should have ensured the Fomoraig’s death. Yet it is clear to me that, instead, I took his life. We are secured to each other, he and I, in an uneasy truce, and the focus of our mission is on the other side of the road. Without much thought, the Rebel materializes in my hand, and I peer down its long barrel for a closer look.

Through the glooming rain the artist’s scarlet coat gleams almost too intensely. In a grey world, she stands out like a drop of blood on white snow. Her eyes are turned inward on her thoughts. Unlike others before her, her footsteps do not linger near the window of the Takla Makhan. Instead, she halts because some mechanism inside her tells her to do so. Her feet simply stop moving. Breath gathers in her chest then gently expels. Shoulders turn her body to the closed door.  She is unaware at first, of the bystanders, reporters and police investigators milling only a measured distance from the space she occupies.

“Beats th’ hell out’ve me,” the sausage vendor says to the young police constable. “Uh. Sir, ” he hastily adds. Both men stand near the cordoned off section of pavement where the dead woman still lies. “I w’s just standin’ over there.” He nods to where his grill is still smoking in the rain, “when I heard the screech of tires.” Sweating, the sausage salesman pauses to unbutton his raincoat and gather his thoughts. He is already regretting his phone call to the police. Now there’ll be this report, maybe a trip to the police station to make another report, more follow up reports, and God help him a trip to court. Bree will ream him out for sure when he gets home. Getting involved is for suckers.

“Every detail counts,” the constable replies. Deliberately impassive, the young officer presses Sonny to continue. “What is the first thing that you saw?”

People like us, Sonny, his wife’s nasal voice continues to speak in the sausage vendor’s ear, mind our own business and keep clear of the cops. Almost feeling her exasperated breath on the back of his neck, Sonny smiles weakly, and points at the driver of the Ford Focus. “Y’ should talk to that guy ov’r there. He’d be th’one t’ tell ya what really happen’d.” Lifting the sticky collar of his plastic coat away from his neck, the stubby vendor avoids the officer’s expectant gaze.

“Someone will be interviewing him as well, Sir. But we need accounts from all of the witnesses.” The constable flips back in his notebook to check his facts.  “The 911 operator took a call from a cell phone registered to a Santino DiFabio at 5:05 p.m.” He fixes Sonny with a stern look that belies his baby face. “That is you, correct, Sir?”

Sighing in response to the officer’s grim stare, Sonny nods his head and states his identity for the record. Then, reticence broken, the story tumbles from his lips. “Y’ wouldn’ b’lieve it unless y’ad bin here. I w’s jus fiddlin’ with my get-up and mindin’ my own bizness, try’n not ta lissen to th’s bald headed doomster on th’ corner. Ya know th’ type.” He winks at the police officer. Good cheer vies with the solemnity brought on by sudden death, and wins. Laughing loudly, Sonny continues “Th’t so-called preacher j’st took off like a scalded cat when she came flyin’ out o’ the sky at ‘m. Served ‘m right, I thought at th’ time.”

“Sir?” The officer’s pen hovers over the damp page.

Nodding his head in answer to the young man’s unspoken question, Sonny elaborates. “Ain’t nobody got bizness yellin’ bout other people’s goin’ to hell. Served ‘m right t’ almos’ git squashed like a bug by that girl.” Eyes darting to the body still lying in the street, Sonny lowers his voice. “Not th’t I mean any disrespect to her, y’know. Poor thing. But, it just seemed so –“ He searches his memory for the right word. “Whatcha callit? Poetic?”

“Poetic.” Investing the word with doubt, the police officer hesitates before writing it down. Subtly straightening to stretch his tired legs, the constable considers his witness. Although garrulous and somewhat illiterate, the middle-aged man seems to be on the up and up. Of course, some of the worst killers in history were gifted with the most ordinary of exteriors, the young officer thinks, but if Santino DiFabio were a killer it would probably be because of food poisoning not this. He glances back at the crime scene. Whatever this is. “So, the body almost landed on another person,” he prompts Sonny.

“Y’bet it did. Didn’ really see it f’r myself. Jus’ the aftermath, so t’ speak.” Sonny leans in to tap the officer’s note pad. “But I c’n imagine it. She jus’ fell out’ve the sky like an angel.”

Both men look up at the sky then the constable turns a skeptical eye on Sonny. “Are you sure she didn’t just jump from a nearby building?”

“Nope. No way.” Adamantly, Sonny shakes his head. “Ain’t no building ‘round here that would be good f’r th’t. Ya c’n see that for yr’self.” Poking the air with a sausage finger, the vendor repeats, “Nah. She jus’ fell from heaven. Too bad she missed her mark.”

“We should do it now,” Mori says. “Without hesitation.”

Focusing all of my attention down the barrel of the Canon Rebel, I do not immediately process my unwilling partner’s words. Awkwardly, I retract my senses to focus on what my fomorii partner is saying.

“It’s why you brought me here.”

With a feeling of déjà vu, I hear the snick of claws. Almost, I consider letting him have his way. It would be easier, and the paths have narrowed so much that maybe it wouldn’t make any difference.

“No,” I object. “We have to wait.” Even though I have fought him to a standstill, I am thankful that his challenge is mild. I do not have strength for another struggle. Sucking in a gulp of sea damp air, I consider my words before speaking, “The future is not set.”

The Fomoraig sniffs the air. With unerring accuracy he revolves counter clockwise before coming to a rest facing the corpse of the unknown woman in the street.  There are two threads of potentiality that link her to the artist. There is still hope.

Above the artist’s head a dove hovers, bloody wings beating against the air. I can’t help it. My raven heart leaps. In my mind’s eye, already, I feel the talons of the Goddess flex. Soon, I think, my human form will be obsolete. Already, the gears are slowing on Mori’s chest and the nucleus of conversion is heating my core. Still, I hold back time and wait.

Sonny points down the street towards the Grandview sky train station.

An old man slips a daffodil onto the cement on the wrong side of a yellow tape barrier.

A reporter huddles beneath an umbrella, waiting for her cue to inject another news byte in between traffic and weather reports.

The artist turns.

Too soon, the dove plummets in an awkward, flightless tumble onto the cold surface of wet pavement.

Zooming in with the Rebel, careless of the hard pellets of rain, I capture the artist’s reaction with macro precision. As rapidly as a grouse signaling danger, her eyelids flutter. Recognition wars with denial in the brown depths of her eye. Unlike myself, the artist strives to define the line between reality and dream.

Yellow tape and official uniforms, flashing cameras and awestruck spectators, mark the spot. Draped precariously over flesh and blood is a black tarp, hiding everything but a slim hand and a scrap of floral dress material.

Apple-crisp awareness catches in my throat then blooms with aching ferocity into my lungs. Even guessing the outcome, I cannot still my heart. It drums a futile warning. This moment is crucial. It is both a beginning and an ending.

Solid as smoke, Mori peels away from my side. Purposeful, bulking, silent. He slips across the street as fleetly as a cat. This time I don’t stop him.

Standing, with my back pressed to damp brick, I can do nothing to halt the chain of events. Even if I wanted to, I would not call back the Fomoraig. Mercy is weakness. And weakness is death.

Visibly shaken, the artist raises a hand to her lips. Like a petal falling, her coat sleeve bares the silver scars and fresh cuts of sorrow on her wrist. Then, clearing her throat, she calls out.  Uncertain of her own intent, her voice is whisper soft. Even softer is Mori’s advance. She gathers her will and steps forward.

Again, I breathe. For a moment the shadowy fiend melts, retreats. Then she hesitates. Through the lens of the Canon Rebel I capture the subtle slice of past pain.

She cannot escape. As hard as it is, I know that this is true. Even so, I feel a swell of remorse accompany the sound of squealing brakes. It is rush hour. No one notices in the blind rush to get home a hand pressing into the small of a back. No one notices an awkward stumble. No one cares to see the quick turning of a monster away from the scene of a crime.

The artist tumbles in slow motion to the pavement and I am sad. Not depressed, but deep down in my bones sad because I am the reason that she is lying in a broken tangle on the street. In the final moments between her living and dying, I recall who stalks the light, who lingers in the flicker of uncertainty.  Humanity is my father. My mother is something else. Some call me Nightmare. Some call me Morrigan. For some, I am simply called The Crone.

My accomplice lopes in my direction. Uneven gait, ragged coat, and baleful eye scream assassin to any passerby who would care to look beyond his or her carefully constructed reality.  Luckily, no one has time to flinch away from his open contempt; they are too busy dividing their attention between the woman on the street, and the police investigation of a suicide. What are the odds, some of them are whispering, that two women could come to such ends only yards from each other? I could tell them exactly what the odds are, I think. Only too good.