Each front page displayed iconic photographs of Hawk King, two of his classic portrait and the third an image of him seated in a golden woven-wicker throne. From the portrait beamed his golden beak and gold-rimmed black eyes, his black-feathered face topped with golden pharaonic crown. In the seated image, his black body gleamed, bedecked in golden Egyptian skirt and sandals; his hands clutched a golden crook and flail, and his black-golden wings were spread as if to devour the seven winds.
I clicked on the television; PNN was broadcasting aerial shots of tens of thousands of people gathered on the mall of the F*O*O*J’s Fortress of Freedom and at the gates of the ferries over to Sunhawk Island and the mysterious Blue Pyramid. At both places, mourners deposited offerings of handmade Egyptian mortuary ushabtiu figurines, pipe-cleaner and tissue-paper lotus flowers, and small bottles of milk and beer. According to the reporter, arrests for public drunkenness and lactose-intolerant public vomiting had skyrocketed.
“And the radio call-in shows,” I said, further prompting them while shutting off the TV, “are equally wrenched by misery.”
To my group’s silence I added, “Perhaps it would help if people shared their own memories of Hawk King. Their personal experiences of him.”
The Flying Squirrel sucked in a big preamble breath; since he tended to dominate discussion, especially by name-dropping Hawk King and verbally footnoting his every connection with him, I immediately prompted Iron Lass, the only person Festus Piltdown III seemed never to interrupt.
Her eyes shifted toward me dully, the glint from their cold metal apparently rusted over. She was actually slouching—this, despite routinely targeting me and her teammates with comments about our posture during our previous sessions.
“Hawk Kink,” she said at last, putting down a piece of André’s baklava onto a coaster, “vuss ze greatest of us all.”
After a pause, I asked her to continue.
“Alzough, ja, I am a goddess, I felt, perhaps becoss he is an even olter deity from a more ancient panseon…venever I vuss in his presence, I could unterstaandt vut mortals felt when zey met Odin, ze lordt of Aesgard. Hawk Kink inspiredt…ze only vurt I can sink uff iss…awe. I vuss alvays in awe of him. He vuss a brilliant scientist, a brilliant alchemist, a brilliant leader, ja, all of zat. But more. He vuss…”
She stopped, looked down, cleared her throat.
Festus Piltdown sucked in another preelocutory breath, but Iron Lass flashed a glare at him until he let it out wordlessly.
“I vurked viss Hawk Kink for fifty years. I haff liffdt two sousand,” she said. “Zere vill never be anuzzer like him.”
I waited for the pathos of Hnossi Icegaard’s words to permeate everyone’s thoughts.
When Festus looked ready to speak again, I asked Wally to share his feelings. At that moment he was leaning his head toward his shoulder, as if the weight of his grief exceeded the strength of his neck. His hair, flattened, lacked its usual gloss and front-row e-curl. When I called his name, he perked up momentarily, his ever-present, generally unrealistic optimism seemingly recharged. But just like that, the lightning in his expression grounded itself in the deep, dark rings beneath his eyes.
“Wellsir, ma’am-doctor,” said Wally, “the King recruited me. Hnossi, too, an Lady Liberty, an, well, all of us in the original team—course ev’rabody knows he foundeded the F*O*O*J. Don’t know…I mean…it’s like, let’s say if suh’m came up, an ya didn’know what to do about it, y’d just ask him, y’know? Djunnerstann what I’m sayin?”
He scanned the faces of his two older colleagues, but neither met his eyes.
And in words so childishly pathetic I will never be able to forget them, Wally W. Watchtower looked imploringly at his comrades, his hands upturned and empty on his knees, and, with voice cracking, asked, “And now…what’re we sposta do if suh’m goes wrong…an we don’know how t’fix it?”
Saturday morning sunlight fell into Wally’s eyes, twinkling wetly. Wally leaned over and picked up André’s entire uncut apple strudel. As soon as he sank his teeth into it, the strudel began crumbling over his suit and cape. He blew on the dessert, crackling the entirety of it into a strudel-cicle, crunching chunks between his teeth in mournful mastication.
“Good fritter, Br’erfly,” he said, looking at the floor and chewing. “I should show y’all m’recipe for fried peanut butter–banana–and–candy bar samwidges.”
By then, not even the younger heroes would look at him.
I asked Kareem to share his thoughts.
“Since there’s no reason to believe Hawk King could have died of natural causes,” he said without hesitation, his voice as raw as an abrasion, “we’re dealing with a murder.”
Stages of Grief: Obsession
All eyes clutched Kareem, like a loan shark’s hand on the neck of an overdue lendee.
“The murder of the world’s smartest man, by the very nature of such a crime,” said the X-Man, “indicates threat on a scale we may never have seen before. Despite my persistent warnings, this organization has been overconfident, stuffing its belly with its own myths. And we’ve been acting as if all our enemies were dead or locked up on Asteroid Zed, as if all the ones up there now have been rendered totally harmless—”
“This is not the time for your postseason quarterbacking, Edgerton!” said Flying Squirrel. “Difficult F*O*O*J decisions were being made on a daily basis by heroic men facing death for decades before you were born. You’re going to choose a time of planetary mourning to let loose your astigmatic recriminations?”
“Look, Festus, unlike some people around here, I actually cared about Hawk King, which is why I’m putting my energy into investigating, not mourning. Now look at this.”
Kareem closed his eyes, enunciated the word suspects, and a rotating rogues’ gallery glistened blackly into shadow-shapes above us.
“These,” said Kareem, pointing to the lower ring and the upper ring in turn, “are the Beta-and Alpha-level foes of the F*O*O*J who are still unaccounted for. The Heavyweights,” he said, gesturing to the lower ring.
Although the images were devoid of any color save black, we
