Stone Junction

was all right, he liked the bottom, but the thick ice made it hopeless.

He’d started sinking when Volta, calmly and distinctly, said ‘Life.’ Daniel stopped his descent and floated, gathering what strength remained. He kicked back toward the surface, feeling the cold water rushing through his eye sockets, ribs, pelvis. As he neared the frozen surface, he balled his right hand into a bony fist and slammed it upward through the ice, shattering it into a geyser of diamonds. His bones were fleshed when they touched the air. He pulled himself out of the lake through the hole he’d opened. Severely disoriented, he turned in circles, looking for the shortest way to shore, but fog obscured his view. His flesh felt wet, but he wasn’t cold. In fact, it seemed balmy. He turned and faced what he hoped was west and started walking. He hadn’t taken three strides when he stepped over the edge of a cliff.

Volta had just finished decoding a long message from Jean Bluer when he heard Daniel scream. He stood on the backporch in the early morning light listening intently. When there were no further sounds from Daniel, Volta glanced at his watch. It was seven-thirty. At seven-fifty, another scream shredded the silence. Volta turned and went back inside, leaving Daniel’s bewildered cry echoing away across Laurel Creek Hollow.

Daniel’s terror was reflexive, powerful, total – ‘cellular,’ as Volta had called it. Daniel was irked at himself for being surprised. Volta had noted that the feelings of wetness and warmth were precursors to the drop.

On his second attempt, Daniel had no previews of coming attractions, no sense of wetness or warmth. He met himself on the surface of the mirror and immediately fell. Though startled, Daniel managed to form an image of himself falling. He could control the fall with the image, but his grip was shaky. The sound of the wind planing over the shed roof cracked his concentration.

He was focusing too slowly, caught in movement rather than anticipating it. He needed to leap to the moment of transformation, catch the fall as it started. But first he needed rest. He felt so confident he drank the rest of the water, then took an hour nap.

The third time was the charm. The instant he merged with his image on the mirror’s surface, Daniel imagined himself falling with a concentration so powerful and precise that the terror never really began. He opened his eyes.

The mirror was empty. The quilt cushion was bare. Amazed, Daniel stood up and walked through the mirror, the wall, the laurel tree outside. He walked up the trail thinking, How can I walk without a body? Without feet? Why don’t I just sink into the ground or float off? He wasn’t troubled by the questions, just curious.

Volta was sitting on the porch, trying to read a bundle of letters fluttering in the strong easterly breeze. He seemed less interested in the messages than the shed.

Watch this, Daniel thought, even though he wasn’t sure what he would do. Not that it mattered. He felt serene, powerful, invincibly wise. He began to dissolve in pure pleasure. He understood this was the danger Volta had warned him about, but he wanted to feel it forever, wanted to stay there, pouring into joy. He almost flirted too long. With immense concentration he imagined a mirror, then his image in the mirror, and, when their eyes met, himself.

Daniel’s return was wrenching. As he staggered sideways on the lawn, right in front of Volta, he felt a searing pain, followed immediately by a rush of melancholic exhaustion. Confused, he looked up at Volta.

Volta’s eyes glittered with delight. ‘Daniel,’ he called, rising from his chair, ‘you did it. Excellent. Excellent! Finally, someone to compare notes with. Come in, come in – you must be hungry.’

Three: WATER

Sensitive Chaos.

—Novalis

In its unbounded state, it's water's nature to seek a spherical

from. That's why rivers meander.

—Schwenk

Gurry Debritto started with the CIA when he was twelve years old. His father, a marine colonel, served as a CIA liaison officer. When they needed a young boy to pose as the son of a female agent, the colonel suggested Gurry.

Gurry trained all winter at Norfolk with Claudia Lord, the woman agent who would be posing as a bitter war widow and Department of Defense secretary with a child to raise and some information to sell. They were hoping to flush a Russian agent.

It went down in a Baltimore hotel. Claudia fumbled pulling her gun. She’d just flipped off the safety when the Russian shot her. He stepped up quickly as she slumped to the floor and shot her again to make sure. Then he turned the gun on Gurry and pulled the trigger, but Gurry was diving over Claudia’s body and the bullet grazed his calf. Gurry picked up Claudia’s gun and kept rolling as three more slugs tore chunks from the carpet. As the Russian bolted for the door, Gurry came up kneeling, the gun held steady with both hands. He shot the Russian in the neck. Hearing his father’s war stories, he’d wondered what it would feel like to kill someone. Now he knew. It felt good.

With his father’s blessings, the CIA put him on salary. His training was thorough, his teachers the best. At sixteen, he performed his first solo hit, a Dayton reporter about to reveal some bad news about cash movements in the Cayman Islands – not that Gurry cared why. But when he was twenty he did ask himself why he was killing people for a loutish bureaucracy he had come to despise for the monthly pittance of sixteen thousand dollars.

Gurry declared himself independent. The agency graciously gave him his leave, sending two men to kill him. When their bodies were found mummy-wrapped in scarlet ribbon at the bottom of a dumpster two blocks from the director’s house, a truce was negotiated: Gurry would continue to take on special assignments for them at a reasonable wage, but could accept or reject assignments as he chose.

Gurry Debritto’s career wasn’t limited to assassination – he did security work and general demolition as well – but assassination, he often said, was ‘the biggest buck for the bang.’ His fees grew in direct proportion to the narrow legend he became. The most he’d received was twenty million dollars for poisoning Jack Ruby. The least was the twenty thousand for killing Annalee Pearse. That one still pissed him off. It wasn’t his fault it was botched.

‘We’re drunk in a Motel 6 in Stockton, California. You didn’t find Miss Rainbow Moonbeam Brigit Fifth Bardo or whatever the fuck her name is, but we know enough already, don’t we? Other people at the party said she wandered back around dawn and announced – it was the sort of thing people remember – ‘I just went around the