we can offer. I can see that you are starving, Lloyd. Not just for beefsteak and fresh vegetables, but for knowledge. For power.”
“But I can’t leave my parents. Not now!” he moaned. “If we can get to Texas, everything will be all right. I know it. We almost have enough money. Just a little more work. Just-”
“A few more days or weeks working as a talking monkey on a medicine-show wagon?”
“I do a lot more than that!”
“Indeed you do. As the showman knows too well. Are you remunerated in proportion?”
“He’s my friend!” Lloyd wailed, turning to see if he had woken the dog.
“I say again, your loyalty is admirable,” the elegant crone rejoined. “It gives us all confidence in our belief in you. But what of the other matter-your experience with women? Tell me, have you met any suitable females since arriving in St. Louis?”
“N-no,” Lloyd stammered.
“Would you like to?” Mother Tongue wheedled. “Sex and the cravings of the body are nothing to be ashamed of-even in one so very young.”
Lloyd squirmed in the rocker. He could not hide the fact that he liked what Mother Tongue was saying, but he did not like the way she spoke. There was something in her voice that made him think of a trapdoor.
“What you can learn of books and science you can also learn of love.” The old woman smiled. “Wouldn’t you like that? To one day become not only a master of ideas and technology but an adept in the erotic arts?”
Lloyd was aroused by this prospect but repulsed by the wrinkled old woman’s offer. It was not something anyone else would say to a boy his age, he knew. And the thought of leaving his parents to themselves at such a tense juncture filled him with guilt and despair. They had already lost his sister, their home, perhaps their happiness together-how could he leave them, too? He stared at the coon dog, which still had not stirred.
“It’s late,” Mother Tongue acknowledged. “And you must be getting back to your mother and father-at least for now. I did not intend for you to decide on such a weighty matter tonight. But I want you to consider one other reason that you would be well advised to accept our invitation.”
At this she lowered her voice and raised her withered hands.
“The Vardogers are able to project and cultivate fear. They are equally skilled at orchestrating a mob brawl, mining a bridge, or breaking a mind. They have many much more subtle arts, I am afraid. Investigations into forbidden realms. We know they have taken notice of you, Lloyd. One of their agents has been seen observing your performances with the showman. Do you not think that very soon they will seek you out with an offer of their own? But will it be an offer? Or will it be an edict? What if instead of asking you to leave your parents they take your parents from you? What will you do then? No one goes far who travels alone.”
The old woman’s voice had taken on such a dramatic tone that Lloyd instinctively slipped from the rocker onto the sofa. But when he went to pat the hound he found that it was as stiff as a statue, sculpted into a position of peaceful repose. He could have sworn he had heard it snoring, like his father.
“He… he’s dead!” Lloyd recoiled. “You’ve-”
“Old Lazarus is sleeping very soundly, but he keeps me company,” the old lady answered, and blew out the lamp. “Now reach out your hands to me. I have something to give you. A token of my faith in you. And a sign of our trust in your judgment and discretion.”
Lloyd clambered to his feet in the dark, unnerved by the stuffed dog.
“Take my hands, child,” Mother Tongue whispered.
He heard a sound that he guessed was the cat lighting on the floor as the old woman rose. Bracing himself for the feel of her soft white talons, he thrust his own hands forward. Into his moist palms plopped two warm spheres as his fists tightened. Polished jewels, he imagined-fabulous treasures from some far corner of the world.
“Good night, Lloyd,” Mother Tongue said. “For now.”
Lloyd stuffed the jewels into his pocket and stumbled toward the door. Blazon was waiting outside with a flickering lamp. Without comment or question, he led the boy back the way they had come, where Schelling greeted him with a brusque presentation of his calcium-stained tooth. The grotto and the passageways seemed to be much darker now. Why not turn on the marvelous lights? The humpback refused to be engaged on this or any point, and so the boy had to mind every step as they climbed back up to the cemetery. Once they were free of the tomb, the blindfold was reinstated and Lloyd was encouraged back into the dogcart. Their voyage was repeated in reverse without any words being exchanged, Lloyd’s head swirling with questions and worries-and hopes-until, lulled by the legato rhythm of the boat, he slipped into a hypnagogic drowse. When he came to himself again, the boat was docking back at the ferry landing and the air smelled very late-or very early. One of the powerful black men set him down on the pier, and Wolfgang Schelling removed the blindfold.
“All right, Lloyd,” he said. “Hurry home. I will see you in the afternoon. But be careful. Not everyone means you as well as we do.”
These words echoed in the boy’s mind as he raced back toward the stable, wondering if his parents would be awake and waiting for him-and what he was going to say if they were. The streets were dark but for the lights of a shuttered tavern. No one else appeared to be around. Still, there was a sinister sense of watchfulness about the lanes and it wasn’t until he was all the way back to the familiar smell of the glue renderer’s and the stable door that he felt calm again. Gratefully, his parents were both sound asleep-Hephaestus hog-breathing with drink, Rapture sighing low, sometimes saying something the boy could not understand (which was not that unusual at any time).
At the rear of the stable, Lloyd sneaked off with one of his father’s hoarded matches and scraped it hard to make enough light to examine the prize that Mother Tongue had entrusted him with. He expected gemstones plucked from some harvested diadem, but he gasped and almost dropped the match and set the rank-smelling barn on fire when he saw that what she had given him was two brilliant green glass eyes.
What did it mean?
Was the ancient woman really blind, or was this just some trick? After he recovered from his shock, Lloyd extinguished the match, but the two orbs seemed to continue glowing, as if his recognition had triggered some covert luminosity within them. Or is it in my mind? he wondered.
In either case, as he fondled them-and peered into them in the pale light of morning-they seemed to take on a deeper presence. One globe he imagined gazed back at the moments that had brought him and his family to this crossroads, each of the scenes and encounters since leaving their home suspended like prehistoric insects in amber. The other sphere was a lens that he fancied looked into the future, a lightning-lit horizon of messenger possibility and foreshadowings… frozen pictures melting alive… unknown faces beginning to form.
Cupping them in his palms, Lloyd sensed an occult quality of heat and energy about them. What if these really were Mother Tongue’s eyes? he pondered. Maybe she
Something deep within him felt a magnetic summons toward these enigmas-via Mother Tongue and her minions or not. “The door of my destiny is opening,” he whispered to the slowly graying dawn.
Part 2 – The High Cost of Bewonderment
CHAPTER 1. Rara Avis
AFTER HIS PERPLEXING MEETING WITH MOTHER TONGUE, LLOYD found it hard to rouse himself in the
