ASIM issue 55 Read online

  And if I hadn’t been certain before, I was then. I loved her, at least in whatever way a thirteen-year-old boy is able to love, through that cocktail of summer heat and teenage isolation and puberty. And I would do anything for her.

  I searched for a month in Sedona, in the red, dry desert lands, where places of mystical convergence were purported to create doorways to other worlds, maybe one where Magpie still soared on thermals of life. Around each fork in the dusty road, at every new age meeting and psychic gathering, I’d hold my breath and listen, hoping that the whisper of her—that piece of her that still held on—would be stronger, its pulse gathering strength in preparation to greet me, arms outstretched. But all I found were rattlesnakes and dehydration and the leather of sun-weary skin.

  I’d abandoned the car back in Florida, and now down to a backpack filled with belongings, I left Sedona, fearing that the longer I stayed, the more likely it was that Magpie would slip away forever, sure that I’d given up on her. The roots of my teeth ached at the idea that she might think such a thing.

  “Hold on, Magpie,” I said, stepping up into the sour-smelling interior of an idling Greyhound bus bound for New York.

  Except for the smell of the air—a canned, chemical odour—I liked the bus, liked the tall fabric seats that cocooned me from the other rows of people. I liked the ba-dum ba-dum of wheels on asphalt, the way the miles passed slowly, their rhythm the rhythm of time passing. It lent itself to reminiscing and I replayed those years of summer camp, the sweetness of honeysuckle and Magpie’s skin, the hum of cicadas and the curl of smoke from toasting marshmallows.

  I wondered if I’d dreamed those months in-between summers—number-two pencils and brown-paper-wrapped textbooks, bells that rang, and we, like Pavlov’s students, moving from class to class, a mindless herd lumbering through the hallways. Only the summers seemed real.

  It was that way now. The hiss of steam through subway grates, the press of pedestrians at each crosswalk, the buildings—steel and glass and concrete—that stretched to the sky, none of them seemed real, not without Magpie.

  Daytime in New York, I spoke with clerics cloaked in dark cassocks, who wove silently through ornate, white stone cathedrals. Nights, I frequented the vampire underground where music pulsed through my sinuses, and twenty-somethings clad in black and crimson, their teeth filed into fangs, toasted with glasses of one another’s blood.

  In Colorado, I trailed a team of ghost hunters into an old hotel built upon a quartz outcropping. “Quartz has memory,” the young man in the lead said. “It holds life energy. Plays it back.” But I felt not so much as a cold spot in the endless carpeted corridors.

  After I’d scoured the States, I took to planes again, and boats, stowing away on cargo ships to save money, sleeping with my back against tall crates as the sea rose and fell beneath me. I moved on to a replay of our university years, when the dreaded ending of summer disappeared into an intoxicating overdose of togetherness, the only separation that of different majors.

  Nights, I dreamed of my reunion with Magpie and comforted myself for not having found her yet with the knowledge that the U.S. was a young country. If answers were to be found it would be in London, Romania, the temples of Tibet. And still, mercifully, I felt her, and held her close with all my will.

  * * *

  I’m not sure when my hope of finding her faltered. Maybe it was in the deserts of Egypt, where ancient pyramids revealed detailed maps of the afterlife, a bold lie for the generations. Or maybe it was in the Netherlands, where I watched blue-jean-clad scientists implanting the DNA of humans into embryonic tadpoles, or maybe in India where a slim, wild-haired sixteen-year-old spoke with all seriousness about uploading actual personality and memory—the soul, he said, his dark, intense eyes on mine—into cyberspace. More likely it faltered in the moments after, when I found myself envisioning Magpie and I, two digital blips hand-in-hand in a rushing stream of data.

  For sure, the hope had almost died in Haiti, where the bokor spoke to me of zombies, and the thought of Magpie, vacant-eyed and undead, sent me heaving into the bushes. Afterwards, asleep in a creaking dinghy hidden in a small cove, I held on to her harder than ever. If the outside world couldn’t help, if the only way I could bring her home was the sheer force of my own will, then so be it. I’d learn biofeedback so I could increase the time between heartbeats, let her live longer. I’d take up biology, physics, religion. I’d make my own answers.

  I’m an adult, Magpie. I can do anything I want now.

  I remembered the last ticket I’d purchased, tucked in my wallet. One more place, one more possibility. Did I even have the spirit left for another fruitless search?

  Between breaths, between heartbeats, I imagined Magpie sighing, as if I’d given up.

  Still, it was one more place, one more possibility. One more chance. Something Magpie had been denied with the suddenness of the stroke that had taken her, the stroke that just isn’t supposed to fell a healthy thirty-two-year-old woman. I was on the small prop plane the next day.

  * * *

  The island had hardly seemed the place to find Magpie. Small and lush, with mosquitoes the size of rockmelons, a tropical place filled with colour, it spoke of life, not death. Orchids grew from hollows in trees, and sherbet-hued butterflies the size of birds moved from bloom to bloom. Monkeys and macaws called from the trees. And yet there was something there, something that chattered and whispered and sang almost below hearing, a barely-felt breeze along my arms and neck, a touch from something unseen.

  A dark-skinned woman led me along a narrow, vine-draped path. She spoke no words of English but looked at me with jungle green eyes that seemed to reflect my desperation back at me. At each fork in the path she took my hand and steered me, and her touch spoke of wisdom. Eyes watched us from the bushes but no one else joined our trek.

  Eventually even the watching eyes dropped away. We hiked until sweat plastered my hair against my forehead and neck, and my calves burned with exertion. We hiked so long that I expected to wade into the sea at the other side of the island at any time. Maybe at the other end of the world or into the next. The thought sent a brief chill up my back.

  When I was sure I could hike no more—could, in fact, do no more—the path opened into a clearing. We spilled out into a flat, treeless span, and in the open, the air changed.

  It was a graveyard. Or perhaps ‘boneyard’ would be a better descriptor. The path continued, weaving now through a landscape of cairns—thick, carefully-stacked piles of smooth river stones. The atmosphere hung, thick and heavy, not humid-heavy but the heaviness of pressure in the air before a storm. I shivered, suddenly cold. My breath crystallised before me.

  My guide tipped her head toward the cairns and rubbed her arms. She repeated the sequence and looked toward me, raising her eyebrows as if for confirmation. I nodded, intuiting the connection but not really understanding. I followed her toward the graves.

  I smelled snow, though that was impossible in the tropical climate. And yet hope bloomed. Could I have found my way to Magpie?

  Deep green vines wound their way through the dark piles of stones, leaves curling around the top of each cairn. They supported brightly-coloured flowers that seemed to bob and weave even in the still air, whispering and calling.

  The guide released my hand. “Bloso mortí,” she said.

  I didn’t know the language; still, I understood. Death blossom. I stepped closer. I could feel them all around me, and I wanted to tell her, No, not bloso mortí. Not death blossom but soul blossom. These were a celebration.

  Suddenly I felt the weight of all the miles, all the disillusion and disappointment, the weight of the loss that I’d been carrying for all this time, the weight of how hard I’d been holding on. It dropped me to my knees, and I wept. Around me, the flowers whispered, laughed, sang songs of solace.

  When I recovered, my guide took my hand and turned it palm-side up. She pressed half a dozen pale green seeds into it, and then folded my
fingers over them. Patting my fisted hand, she turned to leave the clearing. Getting to my feet, I followed. It was time to go home.

  * * *

  We’d taken our marriage vows on a sandy beach in October, when migrating monarchs flitted across the beach plums on the dunes. Magpie wore a simple white dress and a necklace of sea glass. Barefoot, with her toenails painted lavender and the wind blowing her veil, she looked like the free spirit that she was.

  It was that image I held tight to for the duration of the trip home, the seeds hidden like secrets within the emptied-out capsules of prescription medication that I carried. I held tight to it as I walked up the path to my house—our house—through grass grown knee high, and retrieved the hidden key from behind the urn planter on the front porch.

  After New York City and Nepal, Egypt and the bayous of Louisiana, home seemed the more surreal place—the silence of the workday neighbourhood, the parting of blinds in Mrs Jerritson’s bay window, things from another dimension. In my hand, the key jittered, missing the lock. I rested my head against the door and reminded myself to breathe.

  Inside, dust hung thick in the air, motes swirling in the sunlight that crept in with me like an intruder. Already, two steps in, reminders of Magpie began to seep into my pores, reminders of who I was before my journey: the books on the shelves, silent music boxes in the curio cabinet, unreturned DVDs on the coffee table. Dead plants remained on tables and sills, suffocating in their reminder of what was: Magpie dancing around the newly-bought house, watering can in hand, singing with the radio while I spackled and sanded and paid bills.

  I dropped my knapsack and hurried into the kitchen, digging in my jacket pocket for the bottle of pills. After fumbling with the top, I dumped them out. They spun onto the wood surface and I felt like a junkie trying to get my fix, my shaking fingers scrambling to twist open the capsules and find the hidden seeds.

  Once I’d unearthed them, I spread them out in my shaking palm. I don’t know what I expected to feel, what mysticism or reverence. But there in the kitchen, with the backdrop of the stainless steel sink and stovetop that Magpie once hovered over, the room lit only by the ambient daylight from the small window which looked out onto the neighbour’s pool, there was no magic. No wonder. They were only seeds, the size and shape of lima beans.

  I tried to call up the image of the cairns, the vines winding up and around the stones. I tried to remember the whisper of the voices, the way the air had chilled. But it seemed something from a dream.

  There were no death blossoms. There were no soul blossoms. Magpie was gone.

  I flipped my hand, shaking the seeds from my palm. One skittered beneath the silent refrigerator. The rest I crushed beneath the heel of my hiking boot, pulverised them to nothing more than pulp from a far-off island.

  Then, dropping my stinking, world-worn clothes into a heap in the hallway, I returned to bed. Having come full circle, my heart ached with the knowledge that it was time to let Magpie go.

  * * *

  I woke in the middle of the night, unable to breathe. My chest was a void, no lungs, no heart, no pulsing of blood. Magpie wasn’t there.

  Panic propelled me up and out of bed, choking. Throwing off the covers, I sat on the side, sweat soaking the sheets, and tried to still my shaking. Between gasping breaths, between racing heartbeats, I listened to the place she’d always been, to the place I’d held on to her for so long now, for so many miles and so many experiences. Gone.

  How could I have let her go? How, when I’d been so close?

  My mind conjured up an image of the seeds—bloso mortí—crushed on the kitchen floor.

  Rushing down the dark hallway, I skidded on the tiles, barking my elbow on the wall as I turned into the kitchen. My heel hit the patch of pulpy seeds and I slipped, sprawling hard onto the floor. My head knocked against the refrigerator.

  Without getting up, I grabbed for the yardstick that Magpie always kept tucked in alongside it. For what, I’d never understood until now. Flattening myself onto the floor, I swept the yardstick along the darkness beneath the appliance, pulling it forward until the single escapee seed spun out. I picked it up, closed my hand over it and kissed it through my fist.

  In the dark, I went to the cemetery to plant it. Between breaths, that glimmer of Magpie blinked back to life. I could have cried.

  * * *

  The flower grew almost overnight, its bowed head poking through the soil near the headstone. Even in those first moments, I felt her there, immersed in the aroma of honeysuckle and toasting marshmallows, of summer camp and childhood. I spoke to the seedling in soft tones, coaxing it from the earth. Lying beside it, I told Magpie how much I needed her, how long I’d waited to have her back, how hard these months had been. The vines reached skyward, winding their way up and around her headstone, and I imagined the roots reaching deep, six feet down, to find its nourishment.

  A bud formed. Magpie would be lavender, I thought, the colour of her wedding day toenails … or maybe sunshine yellow.

  Waiting, my throat ached. I needed her, needed to hear the whisper of her soul.

  The flower bloomed on Tuesday, the same day of the week that Magpie had closed her eyes and left me. I held my breath as the petals unfurled. Lavender. Yellow.

  But they weren’t.

  Dark, and marbled like river ice, they looked crumpled, crushed, as if a careless child had held on to them too tightly. I thought of the months, the way I’d held that whisper of her so tightly, unable to let her go.

  “Magpie?”

  The cold of the bloom touched my skin, seeping in through my pores. The flower dipped its head. A petal dropped to the ground and skittered away in the breeze. This thing I’d wanted, needed, craved with every cell in my body, suddenly made my teeth chatter. Magpie, suffocated, crushed.

  “I did this to you?” I imagined her soul, struggling to get free of my iron grip, withering inside of me. “Me?”

  Sitting there on the grave, I remembered that brief breakup all those years ago, how I’d sent red roses and written sappy, rhyming poems, and left lovesick pleadings on her family’s answering machine. I remembered her words, sweetly gentle but firm. You can’t hold me if I don’t want to be held.

  Another petal fell from the flower—soul blossom—and I knew I couldn’t hold her. It was time to let her go.

  I grabbed the flower at its base. The plant burned my skin, not with heat nor with cold, but with Magpie, with every memory of summer camp, every letter we’d written. I saw it from her eyes, felt it from her heart. College, our wedding, the whole fabric of our lives together. And me, as a twelve-year-old boy, a young man with too-long hair, and later, bearded and dark-eyed, slumped in the seat of a bus with only a knapsack and a desperate hope. My breath rushed out. If I paused even a moment, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

  My hands shook. I couldn’t. But I’d do anything for Magpie. Sucking in a breath, I leaned back and yanked the plant from the earth. The memories spun away, the coldness, the scent of honeysuckle and toasting marshmallows, the taste of freshly-picked blackberries. Gone. Magpie was gone. And for a second I thought I was too.

  I sat against the headstone, with the withering plant in my hand. Petals dropped, scattering, and I resisted the urge to reach for them, to scoop them up and press them into my pocket, close to my heart. Instead, the wind took them, blowing them down the path toward the wrought iron gate that marked the boundary to the rest of the world.

  And finally I, too, rose to go.

  Psilanthropy Misanthropy Lycanthropy Beholden

  An Interview with Glen Duncan

  …Jacob Edwards

  Glen Duncan is a British novelist of Anglo-Indian descent. Although his first seven books picked up plaudits largely from within the world of literature, they also titillated the nasal membranes of those odd speculative fiction readers who caught wind of Duncan’s heady use of language and his occasional, devilish conceit of tethering fanciful happenings to the mundane depravity of existen
ce. (The film treatment of I, Lucifer , for instance, will feature the fallen angel in question narrating his experiences and courting debauchery from within the body of mixed-up writer Declan Gunn.) For years such readers could only dream of proselytising; yet now they have been vindicated as prophets of considerable astuteness, for Glen Duncan has seen the light—or rather, a different shade of darkness—and moved overtly into the world of genre fiction. With The Last Werewolf (2011) and Talulla Rising (2012) he brings to the table a thoughtful and decidedly non-romanticised morality study in which the werewolves of teen tripe are ripped apart by the lusting, remorseless jaws that in reality would form the basis of any fantasy made real.

  JE: Glen Duncan, thank you for stepping out and giving your attention to the Andromeda Spaceways flagship now straddling the moon in suggestive silhouette.

  GD: My pleasure. Who can resist a suggestive silhouette?

  JE: It seems the modern writer is expected to embrace rather than exorcise the Zeitgeist of social networking. All those with opposable thumbs must tweet. Woe to any who do not rut at the philosophical nadir, supposing, I am, therefore I blog . Yet, apart from the obligatory Facebook page, you don’t appear to have succumbed to this trend. Is that because you prefer to maintain more tangible relationships with the outside world? Your books certainly take the written word to quite visceral extremes of experience.