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Alice and the Three Dark Kings
Little Songs of Three Dark Kings We were dreaming, after all, before the dream fell away and we realized the stars are with us also in the day.... This world is a patchwork, as are all worlds, as are all hearts made up of moments and memories, snippets of dreams like snatches of songs, words half-heard through walls and patterns once walked.
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| Dreams
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| Starting With Nothing Alice is nondescript. Alice could dress up a little and pass for a girl trying to be sexy, or dress down a little and look like a secretary. Whatever Alice looks like, people believe because Alice is too nondescript to be anything but what she seems. Alice has worked at a Fair and a Bookstore, been a debator, a street kid and a volunteer. Right now she is more street kid than anything. Her mother began waking her at thirteen to say get out of the house, your father's going to kill you today. This is what Alice's mother remembers. Alice does not remember ever getting a warning. Alice's father is brave and fierce and as strong as Alice's mother is brilliant. But they chose to write their story with a bad ending, and now the whole thing is full of ogres.
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Dreaming Alice began dreaming when she was nine, but the dreams began coming more often when she was thirteen, an awkward thick-bodied child becoming a woman. This is when she started looking for places to go to get away from her father. This is when she started drinking, bringing amber liquids to school, watching her steps and hearing in her head a stilted rhyme "As long as I'm alive, I'll survive." She repeated it in her mind with every other step for every single day she walked to school and back again, a charm against harm, against dying, against wanting to die. Alice found friends at fourteen and fifteen who took her away from home quite often. Alice found places to be and people who would let her sleep in a corner against a frozen window, sleep in the top of a closet, or stay awake and not sleep. Alice went from friends at fourteen and fifteen to a boyfriend and the streets at sixteen. She grew long and tall and full and lush and overflowed with life. She fed her desire like pomegranite seeds into the lips of men who gave her safe places. Alice dreamed: A dusty golden Egyptian street, a home of smooth tiles and dust fountains, a mark of a winged scarab, a dark eyed black haired prince who adores her, devours her, slaughters her family and friends to keep her. Alice, walking, found a winged scarab ring at a market stall the next day. Alice dreamed: A demon whose own minions fear him, walking into a court of blades, opening her heart to embrace him. Alice dreams she is a jewel among jewels, that he would kill anything to keep her close, she who simply loves him. Alice dreamed: A room in the basement of a little house in a wide grey city. Alice has become familiar with the city, whose wide grey paths she traverses often in her dreams. This time the dream is in a room in the basement, and a man slips through the wall and catches her, and she pulls away and watches as he cuts her, precisely, limb from limb. Alice is not sure this is the same lover who has visited her dreams. There is nothing of love in it and everything of terror.
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Dreaming Alice Alice goes along with things. It isn't always safe, and she's never sure where she will be next, but it makes a path, a place where she can be by being with others. She goes along with the partying cheerleaders on the street at five a.m. and spends the morning in a drug dealers' apartment. She goes along with the friend who takes her to the warlock's home, and goes along with the warlock to buy liquor, and slips away from him after he takes part of what he wants from her. She reflects everything everywhere she is, bright and laughing where she needs to captivate, deep and wondrous where she needs to enchant. Alice is nothing herself, so she can be anything she needs to carve out a home. She can be anything anyone wants to have a place to stay. She gets in the habit of calling anywhere she stays for more than three days "home." You do what you have to do.
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| Real Alice is sitting in a coffeehouse, studying the rafters. Dan is sitting with her, combat boots and shaved head making some fool think he is a skinhead, when really he's Jewish, and home from the service for a little while in between dunes. His short bristles of hair are red, his coffee is black, and he is tapping his fingers on the table, a cigarette between them. It is late, and dark, and Alice feels comfort in this place. It's good that she does, because she's not sure where she's going when it closes, so it's good that it's open until the tail end of early morning too. Her clothing is black, her arms bare, and she's drawing patterns on her arms with a pen. People have told her they like her tattoo, but she hasn't decided yet on anything she would want to be marked with for the rest of her life. But she draws, the pen on the surface sinking down to meet the ugly markings she feels underneath her skin. Dan's jacket has familiar wrinkles, and she's glad to see him. The last time she did, it was a more desperate time and she was even less sure about where she was staying or what she was doing. He is a solid, strong link to reality when everything else changes, and she hopes he will be safe. Right now, he is hurting, too much death involved in trying to save lives, and that's an old but still open wound anyway since Leah died. She pulls her knees up to her chin, resting the back of her boots on the edge of the chair, and talks about nothing much. "I think," she says, "that in my last life I was a mermaid, and I did something to make someone angry and they cast a curse so I could never be near water again. That's why I screamed when I got near water as a kid, and that's why I drowned when I was nine, and that's why I live in the middle of mountains and plains now." He laughs and nods, takes a pull off the cigarette, takes a drink with the same hand so his cigarette points off at the ceiling. The topic changes easily, he's telling her about Lexy now and where she has gone, what has happened to change the world in three short years. His world may have changed more than hers, but she has trouble keeping track, because everything changes faster than she can remember. She does what she's always done, and drifts along, and lets the world push and pull her as it will. "I think," she says, "that I need to go on a trip soon. But I'm not sure how it's going to go." He says, "We're all going different places. Some of us are going to be gone for a long time, and some aren't coming back at all. Someone needs to keep track, to know where we are, to be able to keep us in contact with each other, to know what happened. I'll do it." "What do I give you to keep? If I don't know where I will be or how to find me? Three toenails, the grounds from the bottom of this coffee cup, and a song?" "That would do fine," he says, "or your keychain, an eyelash, and your last memory. But a hair from your head might be simpler to keep in one place."
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| Death Alice's father died when she was sixteen. The night of her sixteenth birthday, Alice came home. There were plans for a cake, and her sister had come home for one day, then there was her father shouting, arguing with her sister, then the brooding and the twisted knuckles white and Alice went out to the back yard to look at the sky and hide from the white knuckles and then the paramedics came and Alice was standing in the bedroom by her father whose face was so red, and they were bustling about to move him from the bed to the stretcher, and he held her hand and she held his, and he said "Don't sweat the small stuff." They took him away and tortured him, wracking his body with electric shocks, burning him, breaking his ribs with the paddles. He was gone for half an hour and Alice's mother made them bring him back anyway, and when he was back, with half his teeth broken out, swelling like a parade float with water to support the quarter of his heart that was still alive, he didn't remember anything. Not the constant simmering rage or the beatings or how to read or tell the time. He remembered he had a dog. He didn't remember anything else, and he didn't trust the strange house of frightened, silent women. This began the courtship of death, or continued it.
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| Courtship Alice thought of it that way when she was certain no one was listening to what she was thinking. One one side of her life, Alice was wrapped in a cocoon. She stayed at home, in her old room, and went with her mother to the hospital. They had just one long hard fight over something foolish like who forgot to replace the toilet paper. Otherwise, they tended to the man who was swollen like a balloon with water, his tears stuck thick and painfully clotted on his eyelids that could not close for the pressure, his lips split with dry revolt against the forest of tubes thrust down his throat. On another side, Alice's life was a speeding downhill cataclysm, a comet striking a forest and burning it to cinders, flinging stripped pine poles outward in a shock wave the size of a city. It seemed like every month someone died. A friend lost to a senseless accident, a friend overdosed, a friend stabbed, a friend lost to a lingering disease. She heard a new story every time she visited the coffee house, every time she picked up the phone. Alice stopped asking how someone was lost, simply let the tears fall each time she heard another story, half closed her ears to the relentless murmuring of those who lessened their grief by delving in to every detail. At first it was horrific coincidence, then wearing shock, then a giddy, painful whorl of loss, and the thought that it might be her fault simply for staying alive, the thought that these might be gifts of some dark side of her moving life, the thought that it might be unholy luck to survive and survive when she had been so close to death so long and others lost in moments who had been so free of any taint, the thought that it was surely a psychotic thought to imagine that this was the breath of a cruel lover bringing roses. Alice very carefully pushed the thought back to where it at least murmured more quietly, if not staying silent. Alice dreamed when she slept, and walked through a barren land.
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| Cruel Dan was maddened when Leah died, stabbed in cold blood in front of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, leaving an immodest stain dark red on the sidewalk where the church staff or some invisible midnight gnome would scrub and scrub a month later to make it clean, or at least less obvious, for the visit of the Pope. Dan raged so thoroughly he pulls together a team of mourners, a strike team to visit her grave and be bereaved. It was an extremely serious and pure form of mourning, and he wrote poetry that cuts as fiercely as love. Alice was already dulling, her heart stolen, and asked if death is always a bad thing. Dan was furious at the suggestion, a tempest of loss, and savages the idea like it threatens his very existence. Everyone was in a buzzing nest of fury when Leah dies. She was an angel removed, Dan was a tornado of fury, the more so because there is no justice, no answer to the questions to bring peace. There were rumors and whisperings, half insinuations where the kids said they believed they knew who might know who might know who might know who stabbed the girl in the middle of the night, in the middle of the street, who was cruel enough, who was angry enough. Who had betrayed whom. There were rumors and whisperings, plans for revenge made awkward by uncertainty, knowing the police are investigating, knowing because it was done in the middle of the night in the middle of the street that willing witnesses were unlikely, and that the police would find the murderer less likely still. Alice knows she is in danger when she walks on the street, and she is glad she has a leather, its heavy shape long enough to cover her and slow down a blade if it cuts her. She thinks she is glad of the protection even as she thinks about dying every day. She has thought about dying every day since she was thirteen years old. Leah wasn't even someone living on the street, she went in and out when she felt she needed to. She had a family to go home to. She was wanted. She shouldn't have died when those without homes still lived. Alice is careful not to feel too much for fear of shattering.
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| Real/True Alice is walking on the street watching the wind push the dust along. At the big school, there is a fair today, and she wanders through the grounds watching rainbows of ribbons, rainbows of cloth, rainbows in crystals, rainbows in earrings, rainbows of tents. One tent is only black, and she stops at the table, dallying, scuffing her toe in the dust while she catches her breath from the colors. There is a woman behind the table, so slight she might be a child, her face plain and taut and her eyes reflecting rainbows. She takes Alice's hand and pulls her back behind the table, under the wing of the tent and into a dark place with a bright light that fades at the edges and a crystal ball and a set of cards. This is fine by Alice who is used to going along with things, and relieved at the absence of colors. The woman pulls her to a seat in the ring of bright light, then puts the deck of cards in her hands. "Feel them, know them, and lay a card down," the woman says. Alice pulls a card from the middle of the deck and lays it down as she is told. "The lake. Pull another." "The mirror. Pull another." "The void." The woman takes the cards from Alice's hand, and sweeps up the cards on the table, the deck disappearing into some pocket or another as if it never was. She leans languidly against the table, lifting a hand idly to place it against the curve of the crystal ball. Her short dark hair shifts slightly as she tilts her head to look into the orb. "All I see," she said, "is my own reflection." She stands again, as fluid as a serpent, and leans close to Alice. "Why should that be so? Why do you have a heart if you're not going to use it? If you're going to starve it?" Alice feels a sudden sharp pain, and the woman's hand has something in it, something red and pulsing and darkly veined, something beating weakly. Alice clutches her chest, but the woman only lifts her hand, breathes deeply, then turns smoothly away and presses the redness against the surface of the crystal. The orb has bubbles, scattered like trails of air in water. When she takes her hand away, there is a print against the surface like she has dipped her hand in blood then pressed it against the glass. Alice feels light and empty and full of pain. There are marks like red palm prints when she closes her eyes, sick and woozy. The woman sounds as bright and hard as sunlight off clear water when she asks "Are you all right? Poor thing. You'd better put your head between your knees, and shut your eyes." Alice does, and the sun feels hot on her head, and when her stomach settles down and the red marks fade, she opens her eyes to find she is sitting on a hillock between rainbow colored tents, with rainbow ribbons, and there is a dog standing near her fretfully, brown and white and scruffy. When she reaches out a hand to it, it startles away, brown eyes frightened, and runs off between the tents. The black tent is gone, with no sign that it was ever there, and the fair is making as much whistling and chirruping and hawking and chattering noise as it ever was. Alice puts her palm against her chest, and there is no rhythm there. There is a creature pushing a shopping cart coming up the street, and the dust the wind is pushing seems to flow around it. Alice can not tell whether it is a man or woman, its head is down, with a round, tired grey-brown hat pushed over tangled grey and black curls. This person's hands are darkly tanned, curved like talons over the bar of the cart, and a brown-grey raincoat covers a form of lumps and bumps and billows. The shoes are worn to grey, wrinkled and pushed down like the ruined socks that grow from them. At the corner of a golden-brown carved stone building across the street from Alice, it turns its cart, passing through the corner of the building like water. It raises its head and meets Alice's eyes with a piercing stare half earth and half blood. The corner of its thin-lipped mouth twitches up, and it whispers in a voice like sand that Alice still can hear clearly. "When you're totally empty, you can fit anywhere, pass through anything. No one will ever know you were there." Alice looks down at her feet, feeling raw and weak, and sees the dust flowing around her. The shopping cart and its keeper are gone; she pushes up and starts the long walk home.
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| Stars Alice was sitting on her bed amidst rumpled covers, gazing out the little window at the sky. Like dark silk, it rippled, kissing clusters of silver stars scattered with a careless grace. Alice had been dreaming again, and remembered the darkness of the dream. Like this windowsill, the dream had been lit coolly by moonlight. Her bare feet were still a little chilled with the sensation of the smooth grey cobbles, large and small, where she stepped across the path that led through the wasteland. She felt their faintly pitted, worn weight pressing up against the unscarred curve of her feet. She knew her dark King had meant for her to cross that place of thirst and dust, and she knew that the feeling of comfort and home she had there was not her own, but a remnant of the King's feelings in gazing on the barren plain. What she did not know was where the cobbles led; to a coddled, swaddled palace of death, or to a twisted crystal house of dream. She knew she was courted by this dark King - but did not know the land the King dreamed himself. A slight zephyr stirred through the windowpane, and caressed her cheek so she closed her eyes, pulling a pillow close to cradle and tilting her head to listen to the sound of the cicadas in the Summer night. Belle was sleeping at the foot of the bed, and Alice reached out to pet the little grey dog. Belle lifted her head to lick Alice's hand, and rose to reposition herself against Alice's hip. "I'm sorry to wake you up, little girl," Alice sighed. "I just need someone to talk to sometimes." "Perhaps if you weren't so single-minded about who to talk to, you would have more people with whom you could talk," came the response, and Alice started back, looking at Belle, but Belle had lain down her head and seemed to be snoring again. She looked around and saw only a moth pretending to fly up a spiral staircase to the stars. It bounced against the cool window, and landed on the window frame, twitching its softly furred antennae. "Not everyone who wants to listen is the sort of person you would take the time to talk to." "What?" Alice asked. "Is that you speaking?" "No, it's not," replied the moth. "Now, that's being a bit contrary," said Alice. "No more contrary than you sitting here sulking," said the moth. "I don't think I'm sulking," said Alice. "Although I am a bit confused. I've had these dreams for years, but it seems I have them more often the older I get. There always seems to be someone leading me across to somewhere new, but I don't know who it is, or where they are leading me, all I know is it's always a boy or a man, and always with dark hair and dark eyes. The place we start seems different, but I always have a feeling we'll end up in the same place at the end. I just don't know where that place is, or if it's somewhere I want to be." "I would think," said the moth, "that you would get furthest by asking the King in question any questions you have." "It is a King? I've always thought that no matter how he looked or spoke he seemed nobler than any common man. But how do I speak to him? It seems like these dreams always take their own path. And is it, do you think, a little strange to think of making peace with a fellow who isn't quite real?" "No stranger than talking to a moth," the moth said. "I would think the best place to seek a King would be in a court, but since you don't know where his is, perhaps you could start in one more familiar to you and, well, work your way up." "Work my way up? Up from where?"
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| Kings "Were you listening in school?" the moth asked, before flinging itself against the window pane for a few moments. "There are twelve Kings of Earth, six light, six dark, and you should know them by now. Remember that whether they are dark or light kings has little to do with how they look, only what they mean at the end. There are twelve Queens to complement them, but they may not be Queens of the same countries, and it is important to remember about Queens that it is always much harder to tell whether they are light or dark. It may change depending on the day and the politics. Queens are mutable. The Dark Kings Beyond are the ones you seek, or the one that seeks you. These are not the Kings of Earth, they lie further on the road. The Queens of Earth may be ever-changing, and the Kings of Earth often false, but in one of their kingdoms you may find the key to finding your Dark King." It fluttered and beat its wings restlessly, as mad as a tiger in a cage, and startled up and spun dizzily around the moon. "I am fairly certain," said Alice, "that they did not tell us about twelve Kings and twelve Queens of Earth in school. I think they told us about Presidents and Cabinets and Diets and Parliaments, and there were a few Kings, but mostly they weren't any more." The moth paused in its rising spiral to perch on a robe hanging from the end of the bed. "I don't know what a cabinet has to do with a King, though I suppose a few of them have been shut up in one when they became inconvenient, still I think you shouldn't be quite so tied to what you didn't hear. The President of Dinosaurs didn't think there were Kings either, and look where he is." It launched itself off the robe and into a moonbeam, melting through the glass of the window and into the sky with only a trace of silver dust left behind. Alice watched the moth spiral upward, then sighed. "Well, Belle, we may or may not have twenty-four kingdoms to visit, and absolutely do not know where they are or how to get there, but a bug says we're supposed to if we want to know why I keep dreaming and who I'm dreaming of. Where do we even start?" The only response was a small snuffly snore, and the feeling of fur, a comfort. Alice slept.
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| Beginnings Alice has to find her heart. She is feeling weaker every day, thinking of dying more often, thinking of simply sitting down and never eating or drinking again. She has spent days before with no sleep or food; it gets easier after the third day passes with its shakes and paranoia. She knows she can die, but she still wants to live. She knows she should be terrified, but instead she feels hope and desperation, and a sick, obsessive need, a cavity in her that she probes like a tooth with her tongue. She can not imagine telling anyone what she is feeling and thinking. She can not imagine anyone on earth who can help her. She wonders where her Dark King is, whether he might know how to retrieve her heart.
The moth spiraled up into the moonbeam, and the window is cool and welcoming, so this is how Alice begins her journey one night, stepping through the window into the moonlight and up its steady beam into the clouds, following the path the moth took. When she steps down from the moonlight, she is standing on a beach and there is a moon shining in her eyes but it is a lamp held by someone who, she can see, is criss-crossed with bands and ribbons and bandoliers and belts. His voice rings out -
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| Rusalka Alice is feverish, her skin pouring off waves of the heat of the day even though it is nearly midnight. Alice is awake, and is dreaming. She is looking into water, smooth, still water, and there is a face looking back which is not her own. It is the face of an old woman, hollow and starved. Its mouth opens to jagged teeth, stretches wide, swallows up the whole of the false reflection, reaches up from the water to swallow Alice whole. Alice would shrink back if she could, but this is one of the dreams where she can not move, and the ring of teeth rises around her like the mouth of a lamprey, like the opening of a tunnel, and her skin shivers at the fine cold mist that strikes her. The skin of the woman is mottled, grey and green, something from deep undersea. The teeth are closing around her, devouring, and yet they pass through her skin, her sinews, seeking something hidden within, they pass through her bones and the place where her heart should be, and close and catch nothing. The old woman's mouth stretches wide, devouring nothing, and screams in rage and hunger.
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| And Tea Alice is in the coffee shop, Dan is in the coffee shop, and Alice is thinner, not thin but thinner than she usually is. She will never be thin, with her full woman's hips, but she has had little change to spare for food this month. Her cheekbones are stretched a little more taut than usual. This week Dan is dating a new girl so he is a little distracted, but he keeps Alice company while his girl is gone. Alice is angry, Alice wants to rage but she is afraid of what she will break. She grips the handle of her teacup like a lifeline. She tells Dan "He said he doesn't want to see me again. He says I'm just like the street kids he works with. I wonder what the hell he thought I should be like. He said it's like I'm starving for love." Alice sets down the teacup very carefully to be sure it does not shatter. "I said I got along fine without his love for plenty of years." Alice keeps the teacup set down very carefully to be sure she does not shatter. "He said 'That's why you're starving.'" This is what Alice would say if she felt safe telling the story, but she does not feel safe and she does not tell the story, perhaps because it is a lie, perhaps because it would sound trite, perhaps because it is too close to home. The teeth lodged in the center of her ache. She sits silent and keeps company with Dan, smoking a clove cigarette Lorne stole from the cigarette machine.
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| Coffee Alice is in the coffee house, its wood counters and benches as dark as the coffee, glinting with reflected light. She is upstairs with the books, dangling her feet out between the slats of the railing. The coffee cups and tea cups are nothing like Venice in dreams, there is leather instead of brocade, and the place seems somehow uncivilized, but the layer of darkness suffusing the light is like the darkness of the court in Venice. Downstairs, Bill Satan is by the register. He asked her, earlier, if she wanted to be one of his strippers, but gentle Isaac told her that Billy Satan needs a new girl because one got killed last night, and she is hungry but not that hungry. She drifts away from him and will not speak to him again, pushed gently through the water of maybe by Isaac's hand. It ripples around her and she lands here at the edge of the overhang, watching Dark Dan draw a rose that he believes is coming up out of the paper to meet him. Silver and Raven are downstairs at tables, Raven heavy with the child she plans to give away, Silver leaning provocatively against Loren who might be Alice's or might not be, she is never sure, although Silver is sure he is still hers. Drunken Will who should be in elfland with his golden hair is lounging in back with his alcohol, and Doug took his medication today so incidents are few. Alice is at a table with Zachary the sadist, his black hair cascading down over his shoulders and the leather he works dark against his golden dark skin. He looks at her from eyes as black as midnight and says "There's just something about you that makes me want to take care of you." He makes her think of her Dark King, and if Alice was brave, she would say she was glad of that, but as it is, she looks down and kicks her heels. She knows he does not mean anything important by it, he has a partner and a life that do not have anything to do with her, and most of her conversations with him are silence. If her heart were not missing, and if she put her heart in this man's hand like a bird, it would nestle into his palm and turn its head to hide. If her heart were not missing, there would not be teeth in its place, aching to devour. Smoke rises in the air from a dozen cigarettes, curls, folds into itself and cascades down to low fog. Alice is not sure right now whether this world is more real than her dreams. This may be before yesterday, before now, before tomorrow. She is not sure when this time fits in the middle of her dreams.
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| Pedro and Paloma At the water's edge, Pedro squatted, trailing a reed in the swell of a passing wave. His eyes turned down to the ripple of water, but in truth his attention was more on his older sister, who sat upon one of the stone pillars of the quay, her full velvet skirt and laced corset surely stifling in the Summer heat. Her face was refined, her hair kept carefully up as if she were a married lady, and not in the sort of business she truly kept. Pedro's heart ached with thinking that if she had not had to care for him as a brat, she might never have taken this road, might have been a treasured bride of a smaller house, but certainly not a mistress of passing court gentlemen who did not know her value. He glanced up to see the sleek profile of her pretty nose, dark lashes, and full lips where the lights of Venice glittered and illuminated them, among splashes of light cast back by the waves. In the light, he would be able to see where in another few years, the smooth skin by her eyes would begin to show lines. He knew when it did, that the first lines would be ones of laughter. His sister was not one for melancholy. She turned her head to gaze fondly upon him, and the curve of her lips deepened as she smiled. "Pedro, you are worrying again. Worry less, work more, I will need you to be my pillar of support and my true strength when I am an old woman and no longer beautiful. I hope you are continuing your studies." Her efforts had paid for a room with a scholar, and a private tutor changing occasionally to be sure that he learned numbers and letters as well as the foundation of the business of trade. It would be his own concern what to trade, and he would have to build his own stock by the fruits of his labors as an apprentice to one of the great men of the city. At least her intimate knowledge of so many great men would open a path to the best of the city's business. Pedro was eleven, and would need to begin a true apprenticeship in the coming year. He leapt up from the water's side and knelt in a fluid motion at her skirts. "It is not a bad life, little brother," she murmured. "There are cakes such as I bring you, strands of jewels like butterflies, and always music and dance. I hope I am beautiful enough to remain among them for many more years." "I will do everything I may to be your strongest hope always, but I believe you will always be beautiful." The stars flickered and danced, carried away in the swell of the water, taking counsel on which of the kings would become the master of this young heart.
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| The House
Isaac is at the next table, his soft mulatto skin seeping sweat through the freckles sprinkled across his nose. He is talking with his own group while Alice talks with Stephie. He swings around and interrupts their conversation. "Alice... never take crystal meth." "Isaac... I wasn't planning to." "Aliiiiiiiiiice... Serpent's messing with me! She says I'm blind! Isaac is wearing deep black sunglasses. Alice is pretty sure nothing she says is going to help this case. She says "Isaac, you're not blind, we turned the lights out." Isaac waits a moment, then points at a painting with a spotlight on it - "You didn't turn the lights out, there's a light right there!" Alice turns and looks, then gently says "Isaac, that's not a light... that's a painting." She can see Isaac's eyes widen behind his dark sunglasses, and he is lost in the painting. At least he is not worrying about whether he is blind. Stephie has started a competition for who can say something that completely grosses everyone else out. Alice listens to how Stephie speaks, thinks about what Stephie thinks, and then says something she thinks Stephie would say in a way she thinks will pass into Stephie's mind through her ears. It works, although Alice is shocked at herself for the words, Stephie is given pause and decides to abandon the contest because she can't top that one. Snow is in the bookstore selling books. Unlike Raven and Silver, Snow's name is real, not something she took because she needed more drama. Snow is not the kind of person who wants extra drama. Becky the waitress is one of the few without a tag, but Becky doesn't need one because she is slim 16 with long dark curls and her eyes are like a dark sky full of stars. Alice does not have another name either, or she has too many to use. There was a time when she was fifteen that everyone seemed to forget her name, whether they were friends or schoolmates or strangers. She took to telling people to call her what they could remember, and as a result she is Abigail and Yvannya, Sprite and Sylph. She discovered very quickly that what people name her has less to do with what she is and more to do with what they are. The boy who chose Abigail wanted a strict and prim person, the boy who chose Yvannya wanted an elf. The girl who chose Sprite wanted a bright fairy to carve out a path, the girl who chose Sylph wanted a mermaid. Alice thinks she may be closest to the mermaid. She jokes that when she was a little girl she wanted to be a mermaid, and the only time God listened to her wishes was the one for smaller breasts so she could swim more easily. She thinks if the world were upside down, she would be on the underside of a sheet of water, breathing, reflecting the world. When she was nine, Alice drowned, so she knows what it feels like to breath water. She remembers it feeling very natural after the first shock. This is why she thinks she may be a cursed mermaid after all in some other story.
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The Brothers (Satya/Bhajan)
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| Black, no Sugar
It is midnight at the coffeehouse and Alice feels caught between the worlds. Things are strange here. Isaac who Alice likes to bury herself in to feel safe is gone, and they say he and Satya are gone because they held up an armored car with a shotgun. Everyone has details about what happened, as everyone always does when something happens that no one saw. When Leah died, no one saw it but the person who stabbed her in front of that church, but for years people talked about what the police said, and who knew who had been nearby, who they believed had done it. Lorne talked about revenge when he was Lorne, but there were so many stories surrounding Lorne, Alice had learned not to take his words seriously. Isaac the gentle giant and cool blue Satya succeeded in the heist but messed up after in the chase, and Isaac is in jail, and Satya is heading for Mexico so Satya is gone gone gone.
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| Water
Section on 8 - this should be a section wrapped up with the meaning of moving vs. still water, power of water - tell the story of the mermaid as a third party, here the waterwheel, politics, and the grotto. By this time we should meet Faruq seriously.
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Faruq Two of the little maids sent along from the Sun King's Court whispered with each other as they brought in her things for the Imperial audience. Alice, laying sleepily curled in the window, listened despite herself to their chatter. "I can understand why the normal Kings take commoners as mistresses. They are so excited by anything with a pulse! And when they are bored, off goes the girl with or without a child and with or without a dowry for whomever they're fobbed off on. But the Dark Kings? Why on earth are they interested in common women? " "You're so right! They seek us out, want to keep us forever, cry when we break like fragile dolls. It's like going fishing in a koi pond." "But if one of them tried to hook you, would you wiggle off the hook or press yourself on the point?" They both burst into laughter, hurriedly stifled as Alice heard the door swing gently inward. There was a quick scuffle of slippers across the floor, and the girls dashed out as Alice saw the silk of the windowbox curtains softly pushed aside. She gazed sleepily up at the Indian Prince who smiled down on her. "I'm sorry for the interruption, I came when I heard the girls were bringing your things, because I thought they wouldn't expect to find you here in a window. I wonder if you are content to talk for a bit before the audience? If this is so, you should join me for tea. You will not have another chance for a good bite until after the audience, depending on its outcome." Alice pushed herself up, rubbing her eyes and frowning. "There is something in doubt about its outcome?" Faruq's eyelids lowered and his face tilted down and away. "There is always doubt in this world. If you are well, you should come and we will talk. I have had a table set for us in the anteroom. I will give you a few minutes to compose yourself." He slipped away silently and out the door as Alice pushed herself to the edge of the wide cushions and surprised herself with the size of the yawn that made her eyes screw tightly shut. She thought "Well, at least I'd better stop doing that before the audience!" She straightened her kameez and ran her fingers through her unruly hair before padding to the door and into the anteroom. Faruq stood tall and straight at a carved window gazing out, golden afternoon light glimmering from his clear caramel skin and catching in a momentary flare of amber from his doe-wide eyes as he turned to her. He had a small table in the anteroom set with English tea, cream and honey, several plates carrying small heaps of scones and berries. He gestured her to a seat and waited for her to sit before taking the chair opposite and pushing the plates a little toward her. "I thought these might sit well and help to soothe you if you are nervous about the audience." Her stomach growling, she poured tea for Faruq first, then herself, noticing the corner of his mouth softening a little as she did so. "Should I be nervous?" "I would be surprised if you were not, since you are not a fool. Still you may not know enough to be as nervous as you might. I think it's better you know what is at stake than to go into this unprepared, however." Alice took a sip of tea, shut her eyes for a moment and savored the flavor, then took a deep breath and opened them again. "I have a feeling I shouldn't ask, but I think I agree, I would usually rather know what's happening than not. I don't think I really have from the first moment on." Faruq nodded gracefully. "We have come from the court of the ruler of India before this, as you know. His palace may have seemed exotic to you, but things here will be different enough from what you know that you may not even recognize when something is so different as to be dangerous. You have been to the court of the Sun King, but this Emperor is the Sun himself. The little Kings you knew in the West ruled small fiefdoms with much quarrel. India was your first glimpse of something much larger. "The distances of China can not be measured, they are so vast in both place and time, and there is a different language spoken on every hill no matter that all come under the banner of two titles. There are a thousand races within the borders of the Empire, and all of them know that the Emperor is the Dragon King, the ruler of Heaven and Earth. All of them know, and this is very important, that to breathe against the wishes of the Emperor is to die in the most terrible way. My ruler is one of kind heart and wisdom, and although you may find it strange that my people know their place, here the penalty for not knowing it is immediate and cruel. And I can not imagine that anyone would know the true place of someone who might be the mistress or lover or castoff of one of the Three Dark Kings. You will be guessing the mind of an Emperor who is weighing his guess at the mind of the Dark Kings against his valuation of your person." "Well. That's nice and complicated. Do you think anyone will notice if we quietly leave?" "We do have that option, but of course there are possible consequences as with all things, not least of which is death but perhaps more important for you is losing the chance to find your own heart. We do not know if this court is the one in which your heart has been hidden." "Faruq, I don't like to hear you speaking of death. It's bad enough that I'm here, but you are here because of me..." She trailed off weakly, misery written on her face. Faruq reached across the tea set and took her hand between his, meeting her eyes with a molten gaze. "I am not here because of you. My master has told me to help you find your heart. This attitude is too melancholy - I am on an adventure, am I not?" He released her hand and she missed the warmth and comfort of his palms. He tapped the back of her hand and spoke briskly. "Eat, while I speak, you do not have much time." "The idea of consequences is one which I feel you should keep in mind during this audience. The Emperor will be weighing the consequences to himself of doing whatever he may please. The consequences to anyone else do not matter to him. One thing of which you should be aware is that any of the Kings of Earth you have met might have decided to try to keep you for themselves. It is not that you are an attractive girl, although you have good points." Alice winced. He continued, "Rather it is that you are a girl who is wanted by one of the Dark Kings. Therefore, there must be some quality to you which worth having by one of those rulers. This makes the Kings of Earth wonder what about you is important and whether they are missing something by not having it themselves. While you show no obvious signs of passion, a King who cares for passion may imagine you a great lover. While you show no signs of power, a King who cares for power may wonder what power you could bring him. While you show no signs of magic, a King who believes in magic may wonder what spells you may work." At this list of qualities, all denied her, Alice went from a wince to a grimace. "You may have noticed a certain attitude from the Queens of Earth you have met as well. It stems in good part from this same source. For most of the Kings of Earth, this has caused you little difficulty. My own ruler in India is far too civilized to press himself on someone with no interest, and you may have noticed he is far too deeply in love to be distracted in any case. The Kings of the courts of the West are too aware of their own mortality, and would not dare to take any obvious step against the will of the Three Dark Kings." "But this King," Faruq continued, "is not mortal in any sense in the eyes of himself or his court or his country. He is the Dragon of Heaven, the Sun himself. He may dare to approach a mortal insult with the flippancy of the immortal. And as I have mentioned, his guess at the odds of success will have a strong influence on his chosen course of action. Should he decide to try you, you will certainly have the right of refusal - but with refusal comes consequence, danger to your person, danger to your mission, danger to your heart. Therefore, you are much safer if it does not come to that question. He will value you more if he believes one of the Dark Kings wants you unquestionably. He will value you more if he believes you are to be a wife, and a ruler, rather than a mistress or passing fancy. We should dress you as an Empress, and I believe your safest course will be to pretend so thoroughly that you believe it in your own soul. You must believe that you are an Empress engaged in an idle play of hide and seek with your true love, and that he will will emerge at any moment from hiding to delight you. You must not let any movement of this Emperor dissuade you from this seeming, and as much as your feelings for this Dark King may sway, your mind and body must stand firm in this pretense. You must imagine your Dark King is looking deeply into your eyes, searching your mind and spirit, and that spirit is full of yearning toward him and only he. This Emperor is only an illusion." Faruq leaned forward with the intensity of his thoughts, his voice lowered as smooth and golden as honey and his eyes holding Alice's gaze unbreakably. "But you must be aware, in choosing this course, that sometimes seeming becomes more real than being. Above all, do not be lost to yourself. Are you able to do this thing?" Alice nodded, feeling as though her tongue could not move to speak, and unsure if she was so ready after all. "I have talked enough for many days," Faruq said. "You must be tired of this lecture." Suddenly he broke contact and turned his face toward the hallway door. "Efara! Enanna! Bring the things for our little Empress and make her ready for the audience!" |
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She Alice's mother remembers things her own way. She is looking into the mirror and saying "That man ruined 26 years of my life!" Alice is brave and says "Mom, you let him, and you let him do what he did to me and my sister. Are you going to let him ruin the next 26 years too?" Alice's mother seems to take this well, to take strength from it. But Alice's mother was never the strong one, and never wanted to be. A year later, she would say "I never realized how much he protected me from the world." A year later it would be too late, and this would be one of the last things Alice's mother says before she is gone the same way as Alice's father. Alice will be sitting on a rock in a park, kicking it with her heels, with children playing nearby in the sunshine, and Alice will know that nothing she can say to anyone will ever sound right again, and nothing will ever be right again, and she will work to settle for things being OK. Alice will dress all in black for eight years.
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| The Throne of Jade The hall was immense, stretching so far that Alice could barely make out the complex carvings fanning across the walls. The floor was made of inlaid marble, alternating in white with veins of green and black with splayed veins of gold, and the walls that reached away from the door were set with images of flowers and birds in brilliant colors, alternating with panels of cinnabar red. There was an overpowering scent of flowers and smoke, and the sound of birdsong echoed through the room. The ceiling was crossed with heavy supporting beams between wide pillars, and was dark with age and incense. The patterns in the polished stone floor moved like clouds scudding lazily across the sky. Alice set one foot carefully before the other, stepping on the checkerboard path as if her silken slippers might break if trod too forcefully. The heavy weight of her robes seemed to pull at her like drowning waves, and her sleeves and the layers of embroidered cloth trailed behind her like silken pools as she walked. Her eyes were wide, taking in the heights of the curving columns, and it seemed to take an age to pass to the dais which rose at the back of the room. The black dais flowed with water that rippled over Alice's feet as she stood at its foot. Above three layers of thick marble was placed an intricate and shallowly carved double throne of dark jade, with a seat and hand rests carved in the form of dragons on one side. On the other, water ran down the back of the seat in a miniature waterfall down into the base, the pool roiling under the fall and stilling farther away as though there were a great lake in that space. Alice was mesmerized by the fall of the water, and sat in the jade seat to watch it, suddenly becoming dizzy and holding the carved arm rest to catch her balance so she did not fall forward into the depths of the water, as if it were vast enough to swallow her whole. She heard a sharp cry and looked up into the high beams of the hall where it seemed little birds kept their nests, and was startled to see a very old woman in a black robe perched as though in a nest at the corner of the wall and ceiling, her feet hidden under the folds of her robe, and her fingers curved with age, like talons. "For which King do you wait?" Asked the woman, her head tilting charmingly, a small small quirking at the corner of her mouth and her eyes glittering black. "I don't know which one it is," answered Alice. "I thought at first it must be the King of the Dead, but now I wonder if it is the King of Dreams. I have been to ten kingdoms of the earth, but found only their shadows." "Why do you confine yourself to only two noblemen?" The old woman laughed, her teeth bright against tobacco skin. "Why could it not be the Third King, who has no name? He is after all above both those fellows you dream of." "Who is the Third Dark King? How would I know if it is him, or Death, or a Dream?" The old woman nodded slowly. "That would be a very difficult question indeed since he is both their older brother and their maker." She turned her head to watch a darting bird flit into a space in a beam. "I was in love once. There was a bitter boy in the market where I was kept in a cage, and when his master's back was turned, he left the door open and I flew away. It was in an open alley where I could see both the city and the moon far away, that a handsome boy ran by with a handful of papers. I knew him from his many errands through the market. "Zhong-Ze!" I called, "Zhong-Ze! Didn't you get any sleep?" He laughed at my concern. "No, and who are you to worry about it?" He ran on and I followed him, skimming over the ground fluidly, just awkwardly keeping my balance after being locked away so long. I called like a bell, a sharp bird's notes, "Zhong-Ze! Zhong-Ze!" "He stopped by a little open shack where a woman and her children were sitting, the woman playing tones on an instrument made of flat bars of silver. He sorted his papers on the field dirt near the hut, and I sang down to the children who watched me avidly as I matched the musical notes with my trilling. "Zhong-Ze Yi was his name, and he muttered to himself as we went on, I flitting ahead, dancing beside him. "I must carry my wooden figure to the plains to meditate, already. Next year they will want me to marry, but I am not ready. I know no one I love. I do not know what good you will be, little bird!" He picked the figure of a wooden man he had carved, and I two twigs that fell. The figure was a poor, withered thing, starved of any time for him to carve it since he was always working to feed the children. As I carried the twigs they grew from my love, and I added wood to the drought-stricken wooden man. "Zhong-Ze Yi sat in a field for a year, and after his meditation was done he had a great strong wooden man to carry, and he himself had grown stronger with his time away from his killing work. I had sung to him each morning and each evening, and worked to bring him gifts of my love. I believe he loved me dearly as a companion, and on the day I put the last new twig onto his figure, as the moon rose, I became a woman instead of a bird, and we wed." "But," Alice said, "you are perching at the ceiling. Are you a woman now, or a bird?" "No matter how you love, no woman who has ever been a bird can be completely a woman, just no bird who has been a woman can be entirely a bird. I wonder if your Dark King understands that about women. Kings can be cruel when they don't have their way." "Cruel?" The bird woman turned her head sharply to look down her nose at Alice. "You do realize that no matter which King it is, they are not in love with you, don't you? They are in love with your shadow." "But what do you mean?" Asked Alice.
"He is love with everything of you that is not quite real. He is in love with the outline of your soul, with the breath behind a space of your time, with the shape your heart would make if pressed still beating against a sheet of rice paper. The most important thing is to remember that the you he can see is as if through a mirror. Not everything he loves is what you know of yourself."
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Emperor
WRITE SECTION - EMPHASIS HERE ALICE is trying to find her own inner self, is actually working to project something different than what her audience wants and is starting to touch on the possibility of what she wants instead. Manipulate the looking glass?
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Mirror
Alice has trouble with her memory now. She thinks she was supposed to be at a graduation from her college, but she doesn't remember going, so she must have missed it. She will not think for years to put things in order, getting her gown, the date of the graduation, she was sitting on a hill watching the blue sky and watching and watching and then she was not, so she could not have gone to the graduation, it's not that she has gone and forgotten it. There are a surprising number of times Alice must say "Both my parents killed themselves" and she notices that for some reason she always stumbles and says "Both my parents killed myself." She thinks that is a habit it would be wise to break.
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