A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods Page 4

  “That shit isn’t funny,” he says, smiling.

  “Some people think it is,” she says. “Ever hear the one about how to tell the difference between a baby and a bowling ball?”

  He can’t help but grin wider. He knows the joke. They all know the joke. For some reason he’s surprised she knows the joke. He gives her a grudging laugh as he shares his unusually candid thoughts. “It’s really crazy the sort of things we find funny. I wonder if our parents ever had jokes like these.”

  “Of course, they did,” she says.

  “And I suppose they found them funny, too.”

  “Given the right context. So what happened to this boy who made fun of you?”

  “Ronnie? He aged out at the home I was in. On the day of his eighteenth birthday, he just got up and walked away.”

  “So your whole life has been changed by that one boy,” she says. “He must have some powerful magic.”

  Sister Santos ends her presentation. She tells everyone they have thirty minutes to look around and then back to the busses.

  Without a word, Andi stands, goes behind Egan’s wheelchair, and begins to push it.

  He can feel her limp behind him, but it is ever so slight. Holding onto the handles helps her keep weight off her bad foot. She is probably using him as a cover.

  He has nothing to counter what she’s said. It takes him awhile. But as they approach the edge of the bluff, he asks, “Don’t you think one boy can change a life?”

  “If he has powerful magic he can, I suppose.”

  The curve of the river is becoming obscured by low clouds. At three thousand feet above the valley floor, they are high enough up and soon, find themselves in a white bubble of muffled cloud cotton.

  “What do you know about hubris?” he asks, his voice deadened by the air.

  She shrugs as she pushes the chair to a stop near a stone bench.

  He engages the wheel locks.

  She sits beside him. “I know it has something to do with pride.”

  “Brother Amos thinks that it’s foolish pride. But what if you are so certain about something and we showed pride in that? Is it foolish? Or is it knowing more than anyone else?”

  “Knowing more than anyone else? Sounds like something a teenager would say, is what a grown up’s response would be.”

  “But it can happen.” He knows he shouldn’t say anything more, but he can’t help it and feels the words leave his mouth of their own volition. “A teenager can know something…something special…something magical.”

  “You’ll have to stop vague-booking and tell me what you’re really talking about.”

  He cocks his head and listens. They are there. The words of power. N-Ver. N-Ver. His spine vibrates with their bass. And something else behind them like the sound of children playing. At first it sounds like glass falling on glass, but if he listens closely, he can make out individual laughter.

  “I can’t really explain it,” he says. When he sees her about to protest, he holds up a hand and says, “But I do promise that there is great magic. You just need to listen.”

  “Listen to what?”

  “If you’re talking, you aren’t listening,” he says. “Now, just listen.”

  She shakes her head as she stares into the clouds. “But I don’t hear anything.”

  “You will if you just keep quiet.”

  “But what is it I’m supposed to hear?”

  He uses his hands to encompass the clouds. “This. Now. Everything.”

  He watches her stare blankly into the clouds until a breeze comes and they part. The bend in the river appears, and with it, the place where the crazy people live. All the while, he stares at her as she sits with her eyes closed. He doesn’t dare move as his gaze redraws the curve of her jaw and the way her closed lips seem as if they are telling her cheeks a secret. He imagines her sitting closer to him, feeling her breath on his cheek. He imagines it smelling sweet. Not like candy, but something more organic, like the palm of a hand after a vanilla bean is crushed within.

  They sit there, him watching her as she sits with her eyes closed, listening to everything he hears, the words of the Old Ones even now should be coursing through her. They sit as one perfect pair until Sister Santos rings her old fashioned, silver bell to call them back to their busses.

  Her eyes snap open and she turns to him, a hint of a smile playing across her features.

  A surge of something delicate fills his chest. “Did you hear it? Did you hear them?” he asks.

  Sister Santos rings the bell again.

  “Come on,” she says, standing. She unlocks his wheels and turns him around. “Time for us to go.”

  He can no longer see her, but he still whispers, “Did you hear them?”

  Five. Ten. Twenty feet. And she says, “No, Egan. Sorry. I didn’t hear anything.”

  The delicate thing inside of him shatters.

  Then they are on separate busses, each on their own journey back to the Tecumsa School.

  The rest of the day and night pass in miserable silence. By the time he is back in Brother Amos’ classroom for third period on Monday, he’s barely able to contribute. For the first time in his life, he thought he’d found someone to share his connection with the voices of those who lived in the clouds. He felt so sure about her, but replaying everything they’d said, he realizes how mistaken he’s been. Who is she anyway? Pretender. If the best she could muster are dead baby jokes, then what good is she?

  The problem is that she and Zane have been assigned to his classes and they now sit a few rows in front. He can’t help himself as he watches her back, longing for her to turn and regard him. But the best she can do is turn to Zane and laugh at something stupid, or raise her hand and answer one of Brother Amos’ stupid questions.

  “Mr. Egan, are you with us?”

  He realizes that all eyes are now on him. He’s been so lost in his love-hate that he’s missed the question.

  And there she is, turning around, eyes appraising him, inspecting him, analyzing him, and for the first time in years his face turns red. He opens his mouth to speak but feels like Crespo and knows he can’t get the words out.

  Brother Amos’s voice surrounds him. “I was asking about James Matthew Barrie, Mr. Egan, and his most well-known work, Peter Pan.”

  Egan feels the buzzing of everyone staring at him and grinds his teeth together. He hates the feeling. He fights against it. He exhales and forces his mouth to enunciate the words, “Peter Pan?” And of course as soon as he says it, he feels ridiculous. He has his own love-hate relationship with Peter Pan. He remembers in the Cascades with Mother Dixie and how she liked to sit them in front of the television with her library of Disney movies while she drank wine all day. Two of the older kids fought over what they’d watch. It was either Lion King or Peter Pan and he’d been forced to watch them until he was sick of them.

  Brother Amos sighs in exasperation. “Mr. Egan. Peter Pan. We’re waiting.”

  The memory of the older boy named Ronnie and the girl named Jess and their pinching and punching and stealing of his food avalanches back on him with the music of Peter Pan and Lion King as the sound track.

  He says the words again, “Peter Pan.”

  The eyebrows arched. “Indeed. Sure. Tell us about the hubris of Mr. Barrie.”

  “Back to the Greeks then.” Egan clears his throat and sits up straighter. “Pan is the God of the Wild. Barrie named his famous character after Pan to display Peter’s nature. In both mythology and Barrie’s story The Little White Bird, Peter is wild and is able to communicate with otherworldly beings and travels to Neverland.”

  “And his hubris? You were asked about his hubris,” Brother Amos mentions.

  Just as Egan is about to speak, Sister Santos comes to the door, her face pale.

  Brother Amos meets her in the hall.

  Crespo being Crespo listens at the door, then crabs to the middle of the room.

  “They found them.”

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; “Who?” several students ask.

  “B-B-Brandy and Nero.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Egan says.

  “No. That’s what the Sister is explaining They found their bodies in a field near Pikeville.”

  “Are they dead?” Zane asks.

  Crespo nods. “She said it is as if they’d fallen from a great height.”

  Egan can’t keep his mouth from slamming open.

  As bad as the previous night was, this night is even worse. Storms rage outside, and he hears himself being called. But he is too confused to go to them. He’d thought that he’d freed the others of their earthbound dramas. He’d never meant to send them to their deaths. The voices never promised—never told him what they were going to do with the others. They just made them fly and let them join them in the clouds.

  And to think that Brandy and Nero fell from the sky like a pair of modern Icarus.

  There has to have been some mistake.

  There’s been repeated knocking on the door, but it isn’t until well after midnight that he finally relents and opens it.

  Zane stands in a puddle, soaked with rain. His face is red with tears and something else. He slumps on his crutches. “She won’t come down. She wants you.”

  “Who won’t come down? Who wants me?” Egan asks.

  “Andi. She says to come and get you. She said that she lied. She can hear them.” Zane’s eyes grow wide. “What can she hear, Egan? What did she lie about?”

  Egan ignores the questions. He rolls past and into the storm.

  Zane shoves his crutches aside and begins pushing Egan. Soon they are in a loping run. Zane seems to be holding on as much as he is propelling them.

  The storm lashes at his face and torso with wicked slaps of rain. The sound assaults him on multiple levels. Thunder booms and wind roars. Beneath it all comes the voices, stentorian, anguished, starving. They want more to fly. They want more to come to them. The entire way to the water tower Egan wonders what he is going to do.

  Then he sees Andi, standing on the edge of the tower, arms raised to the sky, shouting into the wind.

  “I hear you. I hear you talking. Take me. Take me now.”

  Zane pulls Egan to a stop, then lets go and limps to the tower. He pulls himself up to the top. When he joins Andi, he points, and she follows his gesture.

  She sees Egan, then steps to the edge and shouts. “I lied to you. I heard them.” She spins, slipping on the wet metal surface and almost plummeting below. She catches herself at the last moment. “They won’t stop talking to me, Egan. They want me. They want to make me fly.”

  He shouts. “Don’t do it, Andi! I was wrong. Don’t listen to them.”

  Egan’s chair jerks around violently.

  Brother Amos holds the arms of the chair, his face inches from Egan’s. “What are you doing?”

  “Andi. She’s going to get hurt.”

  Brother Amos’ gaze pierces him. “She needs your voice. She needs your connection.”

  Visions of her falling thousands of feet in some lonesome field flood him. “No. I can’t. I don’t want her to die.”

  “This is not yours to decide, Egan. The Old Ones have claimed her. They’ve made their voices heard through you, their conduit. They want her.”

  Egan shakes his head and struggles to be free of the brother’s grip. “I thought all they did was fly.”

  “You didn’t want to know. You were so happy being a ringmaster you didn’t take time to learn what it is they did. Nevertheless, we are here, and you have been long ago chosen. The Old Ones need to be fed. What lives in the cloud is but a memory of them. A whisper of what they once were. To keep them alive they need ones such as yourself.”

  “But why me?”

  “You came from nothing. You have nothing. Nobody wants you.”

  “But that’s not true. I had a mother.”

  “That picture? I gave you that picture. I found it in a frame I bought at the store. It means nothing.”

  Egan screams at Brother Amos. Unintelligible. Primal.

  But the brother ignores it. “I tried to give you hints. I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen. Remember when I asked you to tell me about the hubris of Mr. Barrie? Why would he have any hubris if he is merely telling a story…a fiction…something he’d invented whole cloth from nothing. What amazes me is that regardless of how smart you are, you still don’t get it. You still haven’t made the connection.”

  “This can’t be true. All they ever wanted to do is fly. All any of us ever wanted to do is fly.”

  “Barrie couldn’t help but brag. His hubris is incredible. He put everything in plain sight, albeit hidden behind a pleasingly youthful narrative.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Peter Pan is real. Neverland is real. It’s not some place for lost boys and girls to go to live a life of freedom from responsibility. Neverland is above us. We see it every day. The sky is Neverland. The clouds are Neverland. They’re where the Old Ones live. You’ve heard them. I know you’ve heard them. You wouldn’t be a Pan without hearing them.”

  Egan reels from it all.

  “The irony of the real story is that the real Peter Pan couldn’t fly. He couldn’t even walk. Pans by their very nature are only half human. Just as you are.”

  “I’m human. What are you talking about?”

  “Your upper half is. What about your lower half?”

  Egan stared at his useless legs. They are worthless for what they are. The wheels of the chair are his real legs. Like a modern Pan. The body of a human, the legs of a goat.

  “Tell us about Pans, Mr. Egan. What is their lineage?”

  “I d-d-don’t know.” But he did know. He’d studied and studied well. He knows the answer.

  “Come now, Mr. Egan. Enough of this. Tell us about the Pans.”

  “They preceded Apollo. The Pans came before any of the Olympians. They were here before any of the Greek gods. Pans were here before anything else.”

  “Why were they here, Mr. Egan? What was their reason?”

  Egan glances at Andi who seems to be levitating above the water tower, her arms raised into the air.

  “Don’t you want to know the reason, Mr. Egan? Don’t you want to understand why Pan is written into The Wind in the Willows as a Piper at the Gates of Dawn? Don’t you want to know why Peter is a Pan and why he needed children to follow him? It’s all the same. Peter makes them fly and the Piper makes everyone forget. It’s all the same. It’s all connected.”

  The sky suddenly booms.

  Then Egan’s legs begin to move, not as legs should move, but as strange spongy appendages, as if they belong to a different creature, like an octopus or a squid. They pull him from his chair and beneath the police line.

  Brother Amos shouts into the heart of the storm. “I’ve been waiting for someone like you. When you came, I knew what you were. It just took time to make you into what you could be.”

  Egan glances wide-eyed at Brother Amos as he is pulled towards the tower. He opens his mouth to scream, but nothing comes.

  “Who is it that pushed you? Who is it that fed you all the information? I knew when I saw the way you looked at the clouds. Normal people don’t look at them that way.”

  “Help me!” Egan manages to scream. His legs begin pulling him up the ladder, wrapping themselves around the bars and dragging him up and up.

  “You looked at the clouds as if they spoke to you and they did. Peter Pan is never about the myth of eternal youth. It is about eternal life. Living as one with the Old Ones. Feeding them. Become one part of them. The Aztecs had it right. So did the Egyptians.”

  Then Egan is atop the water tower. He’s never been up there but has always dreamed of it. His legs move beneath him, pushing him to an improbable standing position.

  “Egan. This is wonderful,” Andi screams. “Can you hear them?

  N-Ver! N-Ver!

  “They want me. They will fix me, Egan.”

  N-Ver! N-Ver!
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  She reaches out to touch him.

  He grasps at her.

  Just as they are about to touch, she shoots into the sky with such speed that she is gone in an instant.

  Egan sways and Zane steadies him.

  Brother Amos arrives on the top of the water tower, huffing. Still, as out of breath as he is, he finds a way to continue lecturing. “Carved on a rock at the apex of the Red Pyramid is a series of hieroglyphics that have been translated. To fly is to cry, reliving the tears of joy and sorrow of everyone who has come before, the clouds a repository of all human emotion, controlled by something older, wiser, and wanting. It is to you we feed. It is to you we pray. It is to you we heed.”

  “I want to fly,” Zane says.

  Egan now knows. He realizes what is job has been. He’d thought he was there to free his Brokens. And he was. But the freedom he thought he was giving them wasn’t the same.

  The sky booms again.

  Lightning strikes the tower.

  Egan feels himself pulled into the air by an unknown force.

  “No! Not him! Never him!”

  Brother Amos lunges at Egan’s legs and grabs them, holding him down like an ecumenical anchor.

  Egan stares into the clouds, white and gray and ablaze with the storm. They are alive. He feels the Old Ones. He can almost see an echo of their presence…images in the clouds of the great monsters they once were.

  Lightning smacks the tower.

  Zane and Brother Amos go flying.

  Egan feels as if his legs are on fire.

  Thunder booms once more.

  N-Ver! N-Ver! shouts the sky.

  Days, weeks, months later, Egan remembers that for one brief moment he flew. He thought he’d love it. It was all that he’d ever wanted to do. But what he discovered was that the feeling was less one of freedom and more being at the end of someone else’s line. Brother Amos saved him in those final moments, whether he knew it or not.

  Egan is supposed to return to Tecumsa School. He’s not looking forward to it. He has a long road to recovery, both mentally and physically. The lightning did something to him. When it struck, it changed the shape of his right foot. It’s more like Andi’s now—but not a club foot—more akin to a hoof. Still, he accepts it gladly, for as strange as it seems, he can walk now. Physical therapy has been the most painful thing he’s experienced, but to leave his wheelchair behind is something he’d never once imagined.