Tamorlan via Wikimedia Commons; modified
for other chapters, see Table of Contents
That morning, Myrtle had interrupted his dream. The little ‘rap rap rap’ upon his door was not untoward, but it confused him, and in a frenzy he was entirely unsure of where he belonged. Three, he counted, always three, never two, never a single more.
By the time he found himself at the bus stop, he could no longer remember the fine details of what he’d seen behind his eyelids. He was alone, in the dark, standing beneath a sign laminated and stapled together.
The bus route was new, Eloise had relayed several days ago, maps in hand, instructing him where to walk and where to turn.
And yet he was still newer.
He was still caught in the half-dream, trying to catch the sand falling between outstretched fingers. He thought he’d seen an old friend there, or maybe he’d been alone in a grassy field and then jumped up and caught a baseball flying out-of-bounds —
‘Does she know how to drive a car?’
His thoughts were scattered as he looked up at the sign’s tidy lettering. “M” meant Manhattan: that had been obvious enough. But…Sixty?
[Random noise.]
When the Sun was hidden in the Earth’s shadow, early morning was indistinguishable from black night. Without thinking, he tried to approximate the phase.
[what would it mean?]
Cedric looked up, but he could see no stars.
By this time, he’d taken the path a few times and he’d secured it in his memory alongside the things he knew were truly real. Bus into the city, walk from this street to that, and connect to a train; drop a coin here, another would go clink clink there — in the quiet of night, even the cars refrained from talking to each other, and he was grateful.
Cedric thought he was sleepy when he sat on the cold plastic seats, very slightly concave, but then he felt the bus pulling its passengers to labor, to toil they did not deserve, and he did not speak. Some were fat and some were thin, but they were all shriveled and some of them hadn’t eaten for completely different reasons. The old were the only ones awake at this hour, and their skin crumpled around their tired eyes and he could not see what they saw. Their skeletons drew the flesh forward toward the calling, knowing since birth that in sloth, they would starve.
Theirs was not to rest.
He tried to sleep on the bus, begging for the briefest respite, but sleep never came. Sometimes he let his forehead rest upon the dirty glass, but it hurt when the chassis stuttered, so he held his head upright instead. When he crossed the Triborough Bridge, his body was still, but the scene poured into his open pupils and what little he saw, he ate greedily.
The sky was dark as was the water, and yet still points of light were everywhere. Little dots like strange sprinkles decorated a cake he could not eat. Somewhere, many little somewheres, people were still awake.
Or maybe they never let themselves sleep.
‘You got exactly what you wanted, eh, dipshit?’
These precious moments were some of the only silence he would have for the rest of the day. The foundling home — the so-called “Magicademy” — had, in his mind, marked a trade, a curious exchange of one sort of incessant noise for another.
It was true the place lacked televisions. And a few of the rooms had devices with needles and indicators he was sure resembled radios, but he’d not yet witnessed them crackle to life. In the bewildering void, he’d realized how accustomed he’d become to an electric buzzing that was the background noise of his crawling nineteen years of life. But here he was, and the telephone didn’t ring anymore and the microwave didn’t chatter or spin and people had to knock on the door when they came to call.
But he still couldn’t hear himself think.
Friday was the worst. Her voice was a bird’s lilting warble, sing-song and emotive. She did not hide her feelings because she was not ashamed, and they poured from her mouth like chalk scraping across a board. Owen had re-entered the house too, and he had the tendency to let his eyes hang open like empty dinner plates, lined in pink, and he stared at Cedric with such unabashed ire that he might have been trying to set his target ablaze.
So Cedric let his face remain slack.
Those who did not detest him were no less overwhelming. Elmer was so kind and effusive that it felt patronizing, and Cedric struggled to understand why the boy so heedlessly disregarded the years dividing them. When the eyes bright and brown looked at him, he felt seen, and he looked away because it was painful to do anything else.
And Eloise…
In the corners of the house, he hid, and he beat himself, unable to reconcile the difference between what they saw and what he wanted them to see.
“Cigarette?”
At high noon, Cedric’s hands felt strange, and he wondered if the men had sent him into a clutch of poison ivy. He learned quickly that it grew here too, and he knew the only way to kill it was with fire.
“Yeah, sure.”
He had trouble understanding otherwise what the men said. The ones who spoke in English had a peculiar way of speaking, and every third word was a code to which he was not privy and subsequently rendered the whole rest of it unintelligible, so he nodded and pretended he understood. Cedric did not look like they did, and they did not look like Cedric, but none would fight against the chain that bound them in penance.
He hadn’t imagined Manhattan had anything unkempt, but here they were, shrouded by the closest thing the island could boast as a forest. They called it Inwood, and blown in at the bottom of the wind was garbage: unwanted, forgotten in every shape and size, clinging to gnarled bushes. He found scrap metal, he found broken bottles, he found empty syringes. Tangled in brambles were scraps of plastic grocery bags and discarded newspapers and the crinkles of foil that had once held a sandwich or a pretzel or hot dog or something else that had once before cleansed someone’s mind of a dire need, an empty desire —
Cedric put the cigarette in his mouth and realized how cold were his lips. The other man was shorter than him, but not by much, and he raised an orange lighter to the end of the white paper. With an assertive ‘fwick’, the flash of yellow told his eyes to close as his hands cupped the given light. He didn’t wear any gloves, not here, and he welcomed the warmth.
He inhaled and a wave of prickles ricocheted within his lungs and reminded him of his heart’s relentless tick… tick… tick. His body was still, but something within him was moving and banished the chill within his nerves.
They did this instead of eating, at least some of them. And when they went back to work, the layers of insulation beneath their skin withered and they became stronger than they had been at the start of the day. Their coats were leather and linen, and some of their shoelaces were worn thin, but within each man beat the same rhythm of red.
In the foul smell wafting about them, the smoke was invisible against the pollution. With his stomach shrunken and neglected, Cedric kept going, and for a while he forgot all about the shapes he’d seen in his sleep.
When the Sun sank behind the skyscrapers and the sky was heavy with peaches and grenadine, Cedric heard the whistle and knew his day was done. He joined the line and shed his colors and stifled a yawn. In his pocket were several tokens, gold and silver, and he slipped his hand into the right side to make sure they were still there.
Leaving the park, people were walking by a thin woman in an impeccably clean black wool coat. Her sharp chin followed her gaze downward into a leather-bound book that had kept her company for nearly half an hour. Gold lettering had been pressed deep into the spine, but in the low light, it was impossible to make out.
She raised her eyes as he approached, leaving only a sliver of her neck visible above a plush taupe scarf, its delicate tassels touching the edge of the folded collar. At her temples were several fine hairs dancing at the will of the wind.
“Thanks for waiting on me,” Cedric said a little slowly, as if the words were stones in his throat, rounded and refusing to join hands.
She slipped a ribbon between the pages of her text.
“Think nothing of it,” Myrtle replied plainly. “You have until the end of next week?”
“Two, I think.”
They caught each other’s eyes, and then Myrtle looked away, gaze suspended upon a point far in the distance. “We’ve been invited to dinner—”
She raised her hand to present something to him, and he was a mirror, noticing again how straight she stood, not so unlike the woman who stood behind her husband in black and white for a photograph posed all those years ago.
She gave him two tokens for the subway, and he slipped them into his pocket, thinking he already knew what they said:
‘GOOD FOR ONE RIDE’
Davian’s townhouse was almost as far as one could be from the forest uptown without jumping into the river. Here, the grid was a memory; long avenues ended without ceremony and streets sprang forth at odd angles, forming irregular triangles in the space between. They were filled with thinning grasses that became nets for candy wrappers and severed strings.
They were still wrapped in fences.
Cedric was completely disoriented when they stepped out of the station. With the darkened sky overhead, he couldn’t tell downtown from up, so he sank into Myrtle’s shadow and followed her through the streets.
Where she turned, he stepped in turn.
Flower-pots flanked steep flights of stairs and tall windows were transparent, lines of brick above as eyebrows stretched up in haughty faces. The streets were narrow, but still the sky pushed air into the corridor.
Between 10th and 11th Street sat two small roads, one going toward the river, and one away. Before one of these buildings, after a plethora of steps Cedric hadn’t bothered to count, Myrtle stopped and looked up.
In-between two structures each in quiet beige and drab grey was a building pushing against its domain in unspoken defiance. The brick was dark reddish in the early evening’s light, obscured in places by climbing ivy. A lamplight showed the waxy surface of the leaves, yellow-white where it defeated the emerald.
It befit the occupant, but so too did it contain him.
Myrtle had just craned her head to look toward Cedric when the door opened — all before they’d taken a single step.
The door was heavy; deep green like the plants climbing the façade, and it had a doorknocker in tarnished silver, now cast aside as the man stepped out of his house.
Davian was dressed in a dark blue suit, and a white shirt sat beneath. He wore a vest in a complementary blue, and gold chain dangled between his open jacket. It was the tie, in bold indigo, that questioned whether his dress belonged in past or present.
Myrtle began to ascend, making little sound as her shoes hit each step, and Cedric followed her.
“A fine evening to you both, and welcome.”
The steps were high and shallow, and so that it was nearly impossible to lay the foot flat, nor was there a handrail.
“What’s mine is yours.”
The entry was bright, illuminated by electric lights that cast a warm diffuse light through spheres of frosted glass. The wood, medium-brown, was everywhere, protected in places by a royal carpet and a wallpaper in muted blueberry. Trails of white and gold made little patterns that twisted in crossing chains, and Cedric could see the side of a grandfather clock in a slightly darker wood face the wall of a rather wide staircase.
“Myrtle—Cedric—lovely to have you; may I take your coats?”
Myrtle carefully removed her garment and in an instant, the long overcoat hung generously on either side of Davian’s outstretched arm. He extended his hand for Cedric’s: a leather coat shaped something like a varsity jacket lacking a single letter or ornamentation. It fit perfectly, and yet, he sometimes found it constricting.
Without so much as a gesture, as soon as the coat had left Cedric’s hand, both disappeared, and Davian was suddenly unencumbered, left only with a sly grin spreading across his cheeks.
Behind him was a grand set of stairs, in the center of which a dark carpet was affixed.
“I am so glad you were able to make it. Finally, even you could not conjure an excuse, could you my dear?”
Myrtle blinked and let her eyelids draw a weary expression.
“Please come into the drawing room and let me offer you a drink.”
He began to walk upstairs. “It’s been too long, hasn’t it? When was it you last entered my stronghold? I’m trying to remember…”
Cedric looked at Myrtle, her face still, and she waited a moment, the footfall of the ascent the only sound.
Davian pushed open the door at the top of the stairs. “Was it the Fourth?” As they entered, he quickly resumed his duties as host, “I have a lovely sherry I am sure you will enjoy—”
Here the room had a dark red wallpaper, but the woodwork matched the rest of the home.
Davian turned to a silver tray and began pouring a pale amber liquid into two small glasses, each with a thick green rim.
His back was still turned as he noted brightly, “Amontillado. Thirty year, as they say.”
When he turned around, he had a glass in each hand, and his eyes were squinted up in the corners so that the smallest wrinkle broke his skin. “Don’t ask me where I got it.”
He handed one to Cedric, and then turned back to Myrtle, who was silent until he tore his eyes from the youth. She looked at the glass, and then into his eyes. “On second thought—”
After a breath, her voice was resolute. “Whiskey.”
It was said by the old woman as impulse, a word of honed steel, and so too came the condition:
“Neat.”
They were invited to sit, and they did: Cedric first, and then Myrtle, smoothing her dress as she took the arm of the long couch, leaving the cushion in-between completely bare. Davian pulled a chair to sit across from them, and, as if he’d let his eyes fall, Cedric saw Davian’s second-choice sherry simply appear on the polished table dividing them. The overstuffed chair, too, had not been pulled so much as it jumped, making not a sound as Davian sat in it, leaning forward over his knees in a gesture seeming so unlike his fine suit.
Cedric had not realized that the tie, seeming at first plain, had a pattern of diamonds in slightly different hues, some seeming dark and bluish, and others a pale lilac when they reflected the ambiance.
“You did not answer my question—” he said to the woman. “When was it that I last had the pleasure of your company? It has been so difficult to persuade you to step foot outside that drafty old house. You’re always finding one reason or another to insist that you can’t leave your little darlings for even one instant—”
Myrtle had been glad to abandon the question, but again prodded, she released the hold on her tongue.
She spoke with restraint, as if it were her last resort. “…You still had Sam.”
Cedric thought he saw the man’s face change color, first pale, then to blush, and he sat back in his chair and took a sip of the amontillado.
They were quiet for a moment, and then Davian sat forward again, and spoke over his right knee.
“Sam,” he began ponderously, and then clarified. “Sam was my dog, Cedric.”
Cedric did not say anything, but he looked at Davian, who did not look back at him, and instead looked at the liquid in the tinted glass.
“Was it really that long ago?” He asked Myrtle in disbelief, knowing no response would satisfy.
“Yes…” he answered himself quietly, not waiting on her word. “Yes, I suppose it was.”
“Good dog, Sam,” he mused, and raised the glass to his lips to fortify himself. “Stubborn, delightful, candid, brave—”
His vigor had evaporated, and in its place were the sensations of years passed in quiet, floating like balloons from silver ribbons. “…A good friend—”
He stumbled in his recollection and his eyes bounced between unseen dust motes. “Fiercely loyal little blighter. Couldn’t leave him with anyone if I didn’t want to be restoring missing fingers. He wouldn’t have it, not even for a single afternoon.”
Cedric watched as Davian let his sherry tilt, and the edge touched one side of the thickened rim.
“Not a bad bone in his stout little body.”
Davian’s eyes were glassy and wet, but still his face was dry. “Chest like a barrel, that dog. Stout. Strong.”
“Strong…” He repeated, and trailed off, and no one said anything for a long time.
“He loved you,” Myrtle chimed gently, and Davian heard, and quietly agreed.
“Yes…” He said into his memories. “He did.”
Cedric still had a glass half-full when Davian asked the pair to accompany him downstairs to the kitchen. He left it abandoned on the table, as seemed customary, and followed the mage out of the room and back down the staircase.
On the first floor, they rounded a corner and proceeded down a narrow hallway. The smell of food, which had not yet made it upstairs, filled his nostrils and made his stomach lurch.
The door to the kitchen had no knob, rather, it had been set on a spring. Davian pushed it open, let Myrtle and her young student through, and allowed it to oscillate on the hinge and come to a stop, but not before swinging back and forth several times.
The tinkling sound of classical music sat underneath, its origin obscured, with a bubbling pot providing accompaniment.
“Cedric, Myrtle is already quite aware of my mortal weaknesses, but as you are a guest in my home, I will treat you to the best I can offer.”
The kitchen was unexpectedly enormous. Off to one side was set a pair of ovens, each with several large heating elements atop. Covering the pair was a large griddle straddling the middle; off to the left were two large pots, and to the other a wide, shallow skillet with a clear top. Visible beneath the glass was the deep emerald of green vegetables, sitting in waiting; the heat underneath sat idle.
“I’m sure Myrtle has given you her usual diatribe about fine dining, but I’ve developed a number of opinions over the years; proclivities, if you will. I toss a few sovereigns to ConEd for the privilege of cooking with gas. In this avenue, there is no replacement for the old ways.”
Myrtle frowned.
“Yes, some will say it leaves a bit of a odor, a residue. I don’t doubt it. Such is the cost of natural combustion. But there really can be no shortcuts for those in pursuit of perfection.”
While Myrtle and Cedric still collected near the entrance, Davian moved around the kitchen with ease, first inspecting the boiling liquid on the stove and then moving on the other side of the island. Cedric felt as if the room was far wider than the land should have allowed, but he reined in his skepticism in light of the evidence.
“Can I offer you both a glass of wine?” he bent down and continued to speak while shifting bottles that were stored beneath the edge of the counter. “I know white is customary to serve alongside chicken, but for such an occasion, I just can’t help but select something that offers more complexity—”
“I say, ‘to Hell with tradition.’”
He stood straight and placed a bottle of wine next to a decanter. The glass was green, but the liquid inside left the object completely opaque. “Burgundy, and to say that it’s beautiful doesn’t do it the justice it deserves. In this matter, my poetry will falter. I will let you judge for yourself.”
“Davian...” Myrtle began, but her voice was unexpectedly quiet, disappearing in the cavernous room. Davian continued as if she had said nothing, already working at the hinge of a corkscrew to release the vital tool.
“You might be tempted to confuse Burgundy with Pinot Noir—some unfortunately do—but let me elucidate the key distinction, one amongst many, and none that can be neglected or ignored.”
Davian pressed the point of the corkscrew against the cork and forced the metal inward with a careful, practiced repetition. Like a mechanism, he brought his wrist around, grasped the handle, and revolved his forearm until his body would turn no more. He repeated this several times until the pressurized air let loose with a quick pop!
“The important thing to realize,” Davian said, a small flame appearing from the tip of his finger, “is that more must be considered than the mere grape. The matter of parentage is but one piece of the final picture. Two twins separated at birth become quite differentiated from each other, do they not?”
“Vitis vinifera,” he announced, immediately following the false question. “—further distilled into cultivars. But this is where the nomenclature fails to render the truth: where science fails to capture the indelible art within.”
Davian held the flame behind the neck of the bottle and poured into the wide-mouthed glass basin. “Pinot Noir grown in Oregon or California or New Zealand is Pinot Noir. And that’s all well and good.”
He bent down and looked into the red liquid, seeming all-at-once to lecture toward the wine. “Pinot Noir grown in Burgundy is Burgundy.”
He took in a breath, deeply, filling his lungs to their entirety, and then he waved his hands over the island surface. There, in his wake, appeared three wine glasses, shining like crystal.
He took one glass in his hand, the old-fashioned way, and began to pour, watching Cedric as the light rang through the wine.
“Chambertin was Napoleon’s choice, you know.”
The stem of the glass fell to one side of Davian’s forefinger, and he passed the glass to Cedric.
Cedric looked into it and raised it as Davian lifted the decanter.
Davian saw with a sly, knowing smile.
“Wait,” he instructed. “Give it a moment.”
Cedric lowered the glass, noticing how transparent was the red, and how the light betrayed its purity.
As his request was honored, Davian drew his eyes downward. “Let the scent tell you that it’s not gone sour.”
The next glass went to Myrtle, and then he poured for himself, and lowered his voice as his eyes lost their focus, looking into the wine and seeing something only he could see, speaking in a whisper nearly inaudible.
“I daresay it was a good year.”
Cedric had never had wine and he had the sense it was completely wasted upon him. It tasted like wood and pressed flowers and it floated aromatic and bitter through his nostrils and soon he wondered if it was he who had sat for fourteen years in a barrel with the express intention to decay.
He was grateful for the cushioned chair in the dining room that he entered, despite his best intentions, indelicately. Myrtle sat across from him, her black dress harmonious with a dour expression. While Davian clattered in the kitchen, she lifted her wine glass and spun it gently in a circle, letting the drink crash up against the edges. When she sat it down, the red quickly thinned and fell back toward the deep pool in the center.
Cedric blinked his eyes and serving plates appeared, heaping with food far beyond what the three of them could hope to consume. A green vegetable he couldn’t name, a white gravy lumpy within a silver bowl reminiscent of an enchanted lamp, and mashed potatoes adorned with diced herbs.
Over the past several hours, Cedric had heard his stomach complain, but even with the feast laid before them, his appetite was unsteady, and he involuntarily welcomed the wine. Each time he lifted the glass to his lips, he noticed something different. It didn’t seem as sharp as it had in the kitchen, no, it had become smooth, not sweet, but warm and soft and this time he wondered if little pieces of iron drifted amongst the burgundy, not so unlike that which presumably flowed in his own body, a body that had forgotten what had come before and traded it, traded it for—
Davian came in then, and in his hands he held a thick cutting board. Truly, he must have been carrying it, for the weight pulled the thing downward, leaving room for the faint wisp of steam from the bird to dissipate into the air.
Cedric again noticed the tinkling sound of music in the background, and he realized it had always been there, even if he’d failed for a while to remember.
The chicken upon the board was glistening, shining where there had once grown a feather, and salt flakes adorned the skin. The heat had pulled it taut against the breast and the legs were tied, the one nearest to Cedric bright as much as it lay in shadow.
Davian set the thing on the table and remained standing.
“I hope I’ve not overdone the dark,” he said, looking across the table between his guests. “It is so easy to do.”
He raised his hands and they were empty for only a moment, before a large knife appeared in his right, and a steel rod in the left.
He brought them together, methodically scraping the knife against the steel, first the left side, and then the right, and again and again, heedless of the din and continuing to articulate his thoughts.
“I suppose it’s become rather commonplace now, but it was once a rare delicacy. My father—”
Cedric could not remember what was said as Davian began to carve the meat. The sound of metal scraping against metal overtook all other sensation, and he winced in discomfort, but made his best effort to appear unperturbed. He took another sip of the wine—blackberry, he thought—and watched as pressure against the body severed what had once been a joint and candlelight reflected off cartilage and the deep rim at the edge of the wood became filled with juice.
The fat had become molten upon the water, and Cedric heard a cello from nowhere in particular.
The silverware was heavy and felt awkward in Cedric’s hands. The matter of the fork was illuminated by Davian’s effortless demonstration of etiquette, one in which a knife was consistently employed by the right hand. And, unlike Myrtle, once he took it into his grip, he never put it back down.
Cedric could find no comfort in either approach, so he crossed his hands and did the only thing that felt honest.
He hesitated and questioned himself, mired in uncertainty over something that he had once never given a single thought. He felt a spotlight upon him, but perhaps, he hoped in vain, he was the only one paying attention. At one point, he concluded, the masquerade would be over, and he still had to go home.
Davian chewed and swallowed, ensuring his mouth was completely clear before speaking. “So, tell me, my lovely,” he said, directing his charms at Myrtle, “On which subjects have you already lectured upon, so that I might avoid a very dull repetition?”
“What feats have you set before him? In which matters does he show ability, and which still evade him?”
Cedric looked at Davian, and then he lay his eyes upon Myrtle; a fair bit more unpredictable than another helping of potatoes.
She set down her utensil.
“I have made no such demands, Davian. There will be time; there is always time. One who squeezes stone will find there are better ways to extract blood.”
Davian raised his eyebrows in amusement while taking another small piece of chicken into his mouth. He would not speak with his mouth full, so the two waited until his hands were lowered.
“Your allusion does not fail to amuse me—you possess such a keen faculty with words and how and where to place them—and yet I must contend that your assessment does not clearly respond to my concern.”
“My concern,” he said as a matter-of-fact, “is that you’ve brought in a student of considerable Talent to your school, admitted him regardless of his unfavorable age, and let him sit idle for several weeks.”
“Good God, Myrtle! Tell me where this limitless time is to be found, because I for one have been left in the dark!”
Myrtle was unimpressed and refused to yield to his pressure, and the manner in which she forced a lapse in the conversation conveyed her acute displeasure.
“It is precisely one’s potential that forces a very careful approach. If you were to be struck by a baseball, you might raise your hand to deflect the blow. Would you stop a bullet in the same manner?”
Cedric had stopped eating.
“Precisely why you thought to invite me into this venture, was it not? Two heads being what they are?” Davian became more insistent.
“In an effort to maintain good grace, I will gently remind you that I have made it my livelihood to instruct the youth that have no other way to learn the truth of who they are. For decades, nigh fifty years, I have seen—”
“And yet,” Davian interrupted with a newfound ferocity, “too little butter spread over too much bread will—.”
“How many others are willing to do what I do? How many others look at the beggars on the street and even entertain for a moment stepping outside their little fiefdoms to try to make change? We’ve more strength, more capacity, more ability to help those that languish in starvation and yet how many dare step over their desperate moats?”
Davian raised a singular eyebrow in an expressive flourish but spoke with knowing resolve. “You know better than most the danger of stepping outside charted territory.”
Myrtle sidestepped his commentary. “Yes, well, there is always a price to pay.”
There was an observant silence, even if Cedric could not yet know its cause.
“I have made mistakes,” Myrtle continued. “But wisdom is helping others walk a different path.”
Cedric had noticed the wine had gone to his head, and his eyes did not remain still. But observance of what was occurring was not the wherewithal to stop it, and in the quiet, words rose to his mouth that he had seen in no dream.
“What I don’t get,” he said slowly, interrupting their tired banter, “is how the two of you knew where I was, who I was, what I was.”
They looked at him curiously, but said nothing.
“Three, four weeks ago or whatever, I was just sitting behind bars. Played stupid games, won stupid prizes, the usual. Figured—”
He gestured with his hands. “—That was the end of that. That they’d ship me off to Rikers and that was what I deserved. What I should get, judged against the same criteria as everyone else.”
“But, no,” his voice raised, amplified by the toxins running through his veins. “That’s not what happened.”
“You two show up,” he reported with contempt. “Sign on the dotted line, and start babbling about—”
Davian was similarly impaired, and he interjected. “It was she who—”
“So, what is it?” Cedric continued his sloppy interrogation. “Bent spacetime? The sense of everything falling downhill even if you don’t have any clue about your present el—”
“It’s not like that,” Davian stated tartly. “It’s not like that at all. Don’t you dare come into my hall and start quoting some flimsy gospel you received at fifteen years of age.”
“Then what is it?” Cedric demanded with unexpected vitriol. “Because no one wants to take a second to explain to me what the hell is going on.”
“Aurasight,” Davian said, attempting to soothe the young man. “I can see in colors, but more colors than the Mortals have words for, far more.”
He paused for a moment, considering. “I’d like to teach you to notice it,” he negotiated. “Aurasight is a very simple thing, anyone can do it—”
Davian proceeded with caution. “I even think some Mortals are capable, even if they remain ignorant of what they do…”
“It will make the world much more sensible,” he rationalized, “To see in the colors that were once invisible, colors that are there, but colors their eyes aren’t capable of perceiving.”
Cedric was trying to listen, or trying to try to listen, but within him was an oscillation that danced with the current of his emotion, that made the tinny music and the ceaseless babble and the scent of the chicken’s crisped corpse melt into a signal that did not feel so strange and bizarre and—
“So that’s all it is then,” he said, straining to get the words out. “Putting all of the rest of us into categories.”
“This one is red,” Cedric stated, moving his chin where his wrists could not follow. “And this one is blue. That’s all there is, right?”
Confusion and bitterness, years in the making, set his bile aboil.
“And some of them are better than all the rest.”
Cedric, entirely caught in the attempt to make his rhetoric internally consistent, withdrew from the fanciful table. Where his exacting self-control floated away, Davian and Myrtle remained tethered: watching, waiting, observing.
“And that’s just what we are, who we were destined to be, probably since ‘ever, and good fucking luck trying to change the shit you were born into—”
A generous wine glass, set to Cedric’s second hour, began to hover, at first just an inch above the table, and then, freed of its stabilizing force, gained an inch, and soon another.
There were only a few drops of burgundy dormant at the bottom of the glass when it began to audibly vibrate, resonant with a frequency beyond their comprehension.
Cedric, eyes closed in reverie, did not see Myrtle, whose eyes widened in terror. Nor did he see Davian, whose eyes likewise opened to glean the curiosity, but who bore a definitive, irreputable, satisfied grin.
None were prepared when the shaking overcame the music: instantly, the integrity of the glass ruptured, sending tiny immeasurable daggers shattering outward into all corners of the dining room.
Cedric flinched. But Davian was still smiling.