Angel's pulse went into double-time.
'It's Macaulay,' she said. 'He's been found, hasn't he? He's dead.'
There was along pause before Lou asked, 'Now how the hell did you know that?'
'I didn't,' Angel replied. 'I just hoped that was why you were calling me.'
It didn't really make anything better. It didn't bring Robbie back, or take away the pain that Macaulay had inflicted on God knew how many kids. But it helped.
***
Sometimes her dreams still take her to that street where the neon signs and streetlights turn a misting rain into a carnival of light and shadow.
But the dead man has never returned.
Bird Bones And Wood Ash
It's a wonder we don't dissolve in our own bath water.
1
At first, Jaime knows them only as women with the faces of animals: mare and deer, wild boar and bear, raven and toad. And others. So many others. Following her.
They smell like forest loam and open field; like wild apple blossoms and nuts crushed underfoot. Their arms are soft, but their hands are callused and hard, the palms like leather. Where they have been, they leave behind a curious residue of dried blood and rose petals, tiny bird bones and wood ashes.
In those animal faces, their eyes are disconcertingly human, but not mortal. They are eyes that have seen decades pass as we see years, that have looked upon Eden and Hades. And their voices, at times a brew of dry African veldt whispers and sweet-toned crystal bells, or half-mad, like coyotes and loons, one always rising above the others, looping through the clutter of city sound, echoing and ringing in her mind, heard only from a distance.
They never come near, they simply follow her, watching, figments of post-traumatic stress, she thinks, until they begin to leave their fetish residue in her apartment, in her car, on her pillow. They finally approach her in the graveyard, when the mourners are all gone and she's alone by Annie's grave, the mound of raw earth a sharp blade that has already left a deep scar inside her.
They give her no choice, the women. When they touch her, when they make known their voiceless need, she tells them she's already made the choice, long before they came to her.
All she lacked was the means.
'We will give you the means,' one of them says.
She thinks it's the one with the wolf's head who spoke. There are so many of them, it's hard to keep track, all shapes and sizes, first one in sharp focus, then another, but never all at the same time. One like a woodcock shifts nervously from foot to foot. The rabbit woman has a nose that won't stop twitching. The one like a salmon has gills in her neck that open and close rhythmically as though the air is water.
She must have stepped into a story, she thinks— one of Annie's stories, where myths mingle with the real world and the characters never quite know which is which. Annie's stories were always about the people, but the mythic figures weren't there just to add color. They created the internal resonance of the stories, brought to life on the inner landscapes of the characters.
'It's a way of putting emotions on stage,' Annie explained to her once. 'A way of talking about what's going on inside us without bogging the story down with all kinds of internal dialogue and long-winded explanations. The anima are so... immediate.'
If she closes her eyes she can picture Annie sitting in the old Morris chair by the bay window, the sunlight coming in through the window, making a pre-Raphaelite halo around the tangle of her long hennaed hair as she leans her chin on a hand and speaks.
'Or maybe it's just that I like them,' Annie would add, that pixie smile of hers sliding across her lips, her eyes luminous with secrets.
Of course she would, thinks. She'd like the animal women, too.
Jaime isn't so sure that she does, but she doesn't really question the women's presence— or rather the reality of their presence. Since Annie's death, nothing is as it was. The surreal seems normal. The women don't so much make her nervous as cause her to feel unbalanced, as though the world underfoot has changed, reality curling sideways into a skein of dreams.
But if the women are real, if they can help...
'I'll do it,' she tells them. 'I'll do it for Annie.'
The rat-snake woman sways her head from side to side. Her human eyes have yellow pupils, unblinking in her scaled features.
'This is not about the storyteller,' she says.
'It is for all those who have need of a strong mother,' explains the wild boar, lisping around her tusks.
The ground seems more unbalanced than ever underfoot. Jaime puts out a hand and steadies herself on a nearby headstone. Annie's neighbor now. The scar inside is still so raw that it's all Jaime can do to blink back the tears.
'I don't understand,' she tells them. 'If it's not about Annie, then why have you come to me?'
'Because you are strong,' the raven says.
'Because of your need,' the salmon adds.
The mountain lion bares her fangs in a predatory grin.
'Because you will never forgive them,' she says.
She lays her hand on Jaime's arm. The rough palm is warm and has the give of a cat's paw. Something invisible flickers between them— more than the warmth: a glow, a spark, a fire. Jaime's eyes widen and she takes a sharp breath. The lioness's gift burns in her chest, in her heart, in her belly, in her mind. It courses through her veins, drums in her temples, sets every nerve end quivering.
One by one, the others approach. They hold her in their soft arms, touch her hands with their callused palms. Fairy godmothers in animal guises, bestowing their gifts.
2
It's a night in late July and Karl thinks he's dreaming.
He's in that private place inside his head where everything is perfect. He doesn't have to be careful here. He can be as rough as he likes, he can leave a roadmap of bruises and cuts and welts, he can do any damn thing he wants and it doesn't make a difference because it's just in his head. He doesn't have to worry about his wife finding out, about what a neighbor or a teacher might say. Nobody's going to come around asking awkward questions because it's just in his head.
Here's he's hard forever and children do exactly what he tells them to do or he punishes them. How he punishes them.
Tonight's scenario has his youngest daughter tied to her bed. He's just come into the room and he's shaking his head.
'You've been a bad, bad girl, Judy,' he tells her.
When she starts to cry, he brings his hand out from behind his back. He doesn't own a belt like this anywhere except for in his private place. The leather is thick, so thick the belt can barely bend, and covered with large metal studs.
Karl's problem is that it's not his daughter there on the bed tonight. He just doesn't know it yet.
I only caught the tail end of what really happened in Judy's bedroom earlier tonight. I heard her crying. I saw him zipping up his pants. I heard him remind her how if she ever told anybody about their special secret that
