Falling Idols

and hope his car was sound enough to endure to the east coast.

That dripping — a full tub, definitely. She listened to it for a few moments, perplexed; but a pleasant sound if you were in the mood. Promise of warmth and steam on a winter day, or a cool soak on one like today. But as her head cleared of the morning groggies the more she realized it shouldn’t have been promising anything right now.

When she got up to check, Gabrielle halted in the bathroom doorway. The tub could wait.

She knew without the slightest prompt that this was Austin’s woman. Scarlett, sitting on the toilet lid. It couldn’t be anyone else. In a town this size, she and Austin would find each other because there was something barbaric about the both of them, although Austin seemed to have bested it. And what had he implied — the relationship was only physical? In that case, she didn’t need to see Scarlett at all. This was a woman whose bodily tenure you really didn’t want to follow.

“How did you get in here?”

The faucet, dripping. The ripples, gentle across the water.

When Scarlett stood up, Gabrielle saw her arm, Hadn’t noticed it until now, the way Scarlett had been holding it down and out of view. Saw the smear of blood along the inside of her forearm. Saw something jutting from — oh god.

“You’re hurt,” Gabrielle said. The woman had come here to commit suicide, was that it? For the statement it made?

But no. It wasn’t Scarlett’s wrist that was the problem. Whatever was stuck into her was emerging from a split across the palm, just above the heel of her hand. Wide and flat and dense, almost blade-like, a cleaver or short machete. But not the color of metal. No, this was pale, almost a bone-white, and—

It was bone. And it was extruding by itself, as though a deformed extension of the bones of her lower arm had grown out through her hand.

Gabrielle understood then. If not everything, enough.

“But your eyes,” she said. “They’re both…”

“You don’t think we have control over them too? When we really don’t want someone to know?”

“Can’t you just leave us alone?” It was the closest thing to a prayer she would offer this creature. Austin’s demon lover. “God damn you, just leave us alone and let us have our lives.”

“Don’t blame us for what’s in your heart,” Scarlett said. “He’s much, much too old for you.”

*

“We have no need of bodies to exist, but will wear them if we wish to. We gather them from the elements around us and manipulate them as we need. The Kyyth have never restricted ourselves to the human body, but we love it most. Because it is you that we are most alike.

“Through these bodies we seek to bring you wonder. More than hope, or healing, even more than comfort, wonder is our greatest gift, because it’s what makes you most like us. We work to teach you to open your eyes to the magnificent mystery all around you, by showing glimpses of possibilities beyond what is familiar and known to you.

“The greater your sense of wonder, the further into our arms you run, and the more like each other we become…”

*

Austin found them as soon as he opened the door to the shack, because sometime late in the night, or not long after dawn, they’d been set there on the weathered planks, side by side like a pair of shoes waiting to be shined.

He collapsed to both knees when they failed him, and crawled forward to pull free the note left behind, weighted down by those first two things he was meant to find.

What a privilege that you were able to see them over so many years, in so many circumstances, the note read. Child-size to full-grown … and now at last in decay.

Her feet. Gabrielle’s feet.

He scrambled off the edge of the porch to fall into dust that caked around his mouth and clogged his nostrils when he screamed.

What a privilege…

Thoughts, they’d only been thoughts — he’d not even spoken them aloud to Gabrielle herself. Who but the Kyyth could steal these things from the deepest wells inside him? Who but the Kyyth could use them so viciously against him? Who but the Kyyth would even think to try?

Who but the Kyyth might invest some deeper purpose in this, perhaps leaving her hobbled but still alive?

Austin began to run along the road as the sun climbed higher and shadows shrank toward their sources, breathing air so still and hot it seemed to lack only fumes of sulfur. The horizon rippled and the world rolled, then he was there on that holy ground named for a dead mule.

He had no time to wonder why Miracle seemed so atypically busy this morning, as though it had shaken off sleep to awaken refreshed and restored. Its residents, old and new, were flinging themselves out the doors of home and shop and diner. They abandoned cars in the street and sometimes even left the engines running. Some laughed like mad fools while others stumbled along with tears streaming from eyes bright with joy. They collided with him. Some kissed him while others even tried to detain him with a hug. He shoved them out of his way and pushed on.

On a quieter block, the doors to the bed-and-breakfast stood wide. Inside he saw meals sitting on the dining room table, half-eaten with no one to finish them. A spindle-back chair lying on its side; a telephone receiver dangling down the wall by its cord.

He called for her but she didn’t answer, and since he didn’t know which room was hers he searched them all until he found her in a tubful of red water. She still wore the shirt and shorts that she’d worn yesterday. Her legs just ended, in blunt tapers, the only sign of the violence that would’ve taken place here. The pale, waxen hand clutching the side of the tub was reposed, no rictus claw, and her head tilted back against the wall, sightless eyes staring toward the door. With confusion. With expectation. With wonder.

He hauled her from the tub, carrying her out into the heat of day, and now he joined that savage and clamorous