Kjetil Ree via Wikimedia Commons; modified
for other chapters, see Table of Contents
“Davian is rather eccentric,” she began, looking down the street expectantly. “A man of birth, now long estranged from his origins. He surrendered his claims and came here after the War.”
“Many did,” she paused, melancholy, and continued. “Perhaps more of an aversion to the smell of the soil—”
Her breath seemed to evaporate, and words passed unsaid. “—than a true passion for the American way.”
She seemed distracted, caught on something unseeable. “He was not the only one who fled.”
Cedric followed her gaze through the cars on the busy street, and she continued lecturing. “He’s provided demonstrations to my students on occasion but otherwise he keeps his own schedule, his own engagements. I was surprised he was interested to meet you, but then perhaps I did not correctly consider the circumstances. The higher one climbs, the less one can win against the bitter cold.”
Cedric was listening with one ear, his other filled with the veritable chaos of the city street. Nagging at the back of his mind were the inexplicable sensations he’d seen today, piling up and threatening to overflow the hegemony of doubt. The city street, despite its plentitude of oddities, was the most normal of it all.
Myrtle was a strange woman, seeming ever more displaced from her proper era the more she spoke, and he was afraid, yes, afraid, but maybe less because his gut was telling him to run (because it wasn’t), and instead perhaps he was more worried that his mind wasn’t registering the fear he thought it should. Maybe he didn’t want to flee, because then his questions would remain unanswered —
What regret would he endure if he left now?
“Ah, yes, there he is,” Myrtle said, eyes collapsing on a point in the distance.
She sighed, seeming exasperated at the sight coming into focus. “Yes, just as I feared. He would. He would drive that… thing. I suppose I should have expected little else.”
Cedric followed her eyes and looked down the cascade of cars. As time crept forward, one spot was becoming larger as it made its way down the street, closing on their position. And what a car it was —
Cedric did not have to know a fender from a flywheel to recognize that this was no ordinary vehicle.
Painted in a deep purple, the car was quite unlike anything else on the road. Four round headlights were curious eyes scintillating upon an elongated nose, a windshield in tinted glass rising as a narrowed portal above a massive body. Its silhouette was something he’d only seen in the movies, a exclusive luxury allowed only to the most forbidden sections of society, allowed to the rest only through the patchwork cascade of a projector.
And the day was only going to continue.
Unable to get flush with the edge of the sidewalk, the car stopped, heedless, in mid-traffic to allow them entrance. Myrtle, in a haste hardly befitting her antiquated dress, quickly wove in-between parked cars to approach the indigo beast, and Cedric followed suit, placing his hand upon the silver handle for the second row of seats.
He saw the paint was flecked with tiny bits of quartz, glinting in the midday light. Cedric swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth and climbed into the back of the car.
“…Who likes all our pretty songs; And he…”
Cedric was bombarded by extravagance as soon as he opened the door to the car. The seats were bound in deep grey, seeming almost, but not quite, black. The leather creaked as he crawled into the backseat, a large sandwich wrapped in foil and white paper seeming to dissuade him from going any further. He aligned himself on the side he’d entered, sitting suspended on the seat, feeling somewhat ill-at-ease.
Myrtle, too, sat to the right of the driver and closed the door.
The man in the driver’s seat draped his arm over the top of the seats, turning to greet Cedric as he settled in.
“Nice to meet you Cedric. Name’s Davian; Davian Winchester. I’d offer my hand, but—”
Davian had warm brown hair and eyes the color of thickened espresso, the smell of which had filled the body of the car.
Grinning at Cedric, he gestured down toward the seat with a flick of the chin. “That hero’s for you: roast beef, lettuce, mustard, hold the mayonnaise. Didn’t know what you liked.”
Cedric didn’t give a damn so long as it was food.
“We can make pleasantries later,” Myrtle chirped impatiently. “You’re double-parked.”
Davian didn’t move a muscle. “They can wait.”
Cedric picked up the sandwich and began to unwrap the packaging, the smell of meat soon wafting into the chamber. His stomach made noise. “Thanks—”
He prepared to take a bite and thought better of it, looking up and away from the offering. He was nothing without his manners. “Nice to meet you, Davian. Thanks for the ride.”
He smiled, and his teeth were clean and straight. “Hope you like it, you’ll have to let me know what you prefer next time. I aim to please.”
“…Knows not what it means…”
“Davian,” Myrtle began in restrained exasperation, and then was interrupted by a car horn blaring from behind.
Davian screamed, “YEAH, I’M GOING—!” as if the other cars could hear him.
Cedric, formerly engaged with the sandwich, nearly leapt out of his seat at the sudden burst of volume, and he wasn’t sure exactly how to react.
Davian turned his eyes back to the road, depressed the accelerator and with a squeal of his tires, released the flow of traffic and sped down the street.
He mumbled just audibly, voice lowered back to a tolerable level as the speed of the car met the sudden acceleration. “Assholes!”
“…Knows not what it means, and I say…”
Cedric looked at nothing in particular, eyes averted. Davian, sensing the icy reaction, reformed his voice to an amiable tone, presumably addressing his guest in the backseat.
“My apologies.”
He paused before resuming.
“You know, it’s my fault. I keep waiting for them to change, but they never do. I get my hopes up and I get disappointed. Over the years I’ve been here, I would say they’re getting worse.”
But Cedric didn’t take any heed to Davian’s casually thrown pronouns. He continued to eat, and Davian signaled to change lanes. Cedric heard the rustling of icemelt as the car lurched over a pothole.
“It’s not all bad, though. Can I offer you some champagne?”
Myrtle sighed in an attempt to temper his enthusiasm. “Davian, he’s nineteen.”
The man affected jovial generosity. “You say it like it’s a bad thing. We were all nineteen once.”
Cedric swore he could hear a vocalized smile. “You’re of course welcome to a glass yourself, my dear, two if you like; I know you too well to be convinced that you abstain.”
Myrtle said nothing.
“It was their idea to put in the cooler,” Davian said lightly, veering the subject back to the bottle and projecting his voice into the backseat. “It was my idea to move it within reach.”
Davian kept driving, his eyes occasionally reflecting to the backseat by way of the rearview mirror.
“The Mortals have had a few good ideas over the years. Stopped clock and all that.” He looked to his right mirror, then back to the road. “Silver Wraith, 1954.”
Cedric gleaned the necessary context, having little personal experience beyond basic operation. He continued to eat.
“Beautiful little devil,” he said, patting the car above the central display approvingly. “We have a knack for taking what they start and making it better; tweaking this, streamlining that. Improvements they couldn’t see in their wildest dreams.”
“Davian,” Myrtle chided. “I was going to let him get some rest and talk to him in the morning. I think we all need to think about how best to move forward. I’ve told the children—”
“Memory…uh”
“Music OK?” Davian ignored the woman in the passenger seat and inquired to his passenger’s well-being.
Cedric was trying to avoid spilling crumbs on the seat.
“We can change it if you like,” he offered with a certain hint of suggestion. “Just say the word.”
Cedric’s mind was rather blank.
“I know it’s popular right now, I hear it all over the place; figured it was something you’d know,” Davian spoke. “I’m more interested in the classics, but I’m well-aware that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”
He kept talking. “But I can’t say I like this whatever, Nevermind approach to life that’s become so ubiquitous among the young. It troubles me.”
“You may not be interested in politics,” Davian mused. “But politics is interested in you.”
The car was silent for a moment, and he clarified, “Of course, I’m paraphrasing. You’re not like that, are you, Cedric?”
Myrtle looked out the window anxiously, seeming displeased with what she observed. “Davian, I believe he’s been through quite the ordeal today—”
She then spoke with a tone of commanding worry. “You are going uptown, aren’t you?” She asked, looking about uneasily as they went through an intersection. “The 59th Street—”
“I don’t think he’s ready to go home yet,” he voiced wryly. “Are you, Cedric?”
The question entirely rhetorical, Davian then turned back to Myrtle. “I thought I’d show him the sights. Let him see the lesser-seen features of our fantastic city.” Cedric thought he could hear the man smiling. “It is the eighth wonder of the world by at least one reckoning. And who knows it better than you and I?”
“Davian Winchester,” she reprimanded in an acerbic tone. “I’ve been teaching children the way of things for over fifty years, and if there’s anything I’ve learned with certainty, it’s that—”
“Cedric is no child. He’s bright, capable — no shrinking violet — and I’m sure it would make the rest of it all make sense. Why wait? What’s the sense in attaching training wheels to a bike he’s outgrown? You can ride a two-wheeler, can’t you, Cedric?” He said, glancing again into his rearview window.
Myrtle grimaced. “It’s not the way I do things.”
Davian stepped on the brake suddenly, reacting to a cacophony of red lights erupting before him.
“Yes, well,” he commented coyly, and gently reengaged the accelerator. “It appears I’m the one driving.”
Myrtle’s spoke with pointed disdain, baring her teeth. “Don’t make me regret bringing you into this.”
“What were your other options?” Davian remarked caustically. “Was your husband going to drive you?”
“…We could have all three…”
Davian and Myrtle continued their stream of banter, albeit somewhat tempered, as Cedric sat in the backseat and finished his sandwich. He had consumed the offering somewhat ravenously, and he wondered if he ought to have eaten just half of what he’d been given.
But it was too late now.
To make matters worse, Cedric was not terribly accustomed to sitting in the backseat anymore. Once he’d learned how to drive, through a haphazard mix of books, couponed classes, and simple experimentation, he’d become the chauffeur in his own home.
He had never much enjoyed the alternative.
He looked out the window. The bridge they drove upon rose high in the air and buildings covered the ground below as an immense carpet. In the distant horizon, ocean had carved flat expanses beneath an endless blue sky.
“We’re crossing into Brooklyn now,” Davian narrated. “But we won’t stay long, I promise.”
He turned to Myrtle with a knowing nod.
“I never intended to leave,” Myrtle stated as a matter-of-fact. “But land was costly. And I needed more than I had. I wanted something that wasn’t quite so developed.”
“Queens was veritable farmland in those days, downright wild. You wouldn’t believe it now, seeing how it’s grown. There were fields with wandering chickens and pigs and mules—”
Myrtle interrupted this time. “Many still keep chickens. You see them from time to time.”
Davian checked in on Cedric. “You can toss the wrapper on the floor. Don’t give it a second thought.”
Cedric did as he was told, eyes glazing over as he stared out the window, fixated on the growing discomfort in the pit of his stomach.
What had begun in Manhattan as energetic chatter faded into a sometimes awkward silence, hanging over their heads like fog. Every so often Davian glanced around, using his mirrors, looking at Myrtle, wondering about the passenger in the backseat.
He reached forward and turned a knob on the radio, sending the quiet tinkling of a piano sonata into the car.
“You like Mozart?”
Cedric said nothing, his nausea protesting against action. Maybe Davian was talking to Myrtle, and saying nothing would be acceptable. So he remained.
Davian lowered the volume so that it just provided the slightest insulation from the road noise.
And then, in desperation, he began to ask questions.
“Cedric, how are you doing back there?”
He didn’t look forward, speaking rather to the window than answering to Davian. “I’m okay. Tired.”
“Yeah,” Davian answered. “I would imagine, what with the day you’ve had.”
Cedric didn’t say anything.
“Do you mind if we take a little detour? I wanted to show you something. Something other than the view of the back of our heads, as lovely as that must be.”
Myrtle broke in gently, almost whispering. “Maybe this isn’t the time, Davian. Remember mercy. We don’t need to rush things.”
But Davian was like a dog with a bone. Once he had it in his mind that he was going to do something, there would be little persuading him otherwise.
He kept looking into the backseat by way of his reflection, gauging the young man’s reaction as he spoke.
“Do you ever feel like you’re—”
He thought. “—Different than everyone else around you? Like you think — feel — a different language than they do?”
He delivered an addendum with conviction, “Trouble making friends because of it?”
Cedric listened, but said nothing.
“And you try and try but you feel like a square peg in a round hole, a stranger in your own home? That you’ve figured out how to walk like them, talk like them, but you still suffer a loneliness in your heart that persists like a sickness?”
Cedric tried to look away from the window, but his gaze was heavy, leaden.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I guess so.”
Cedric did not look into the front seat, rather he kept staring out the ever-darkening glass, and yet he could feel the two ahead of him look between themselves, a spotlight that had caught upon its intended aperture and returned to the source.
The car was silent for some time, and then Davian spoke.
“Let’s get you some air.”
Cedric was completely unsure of how long they’d been driving, although the quiet had made it seem much longer than it might have been in another reference frame.
“Some things—” Davian broke the silence, and then corrected himself.
“Most things start from unspoilt nature, and through human influence, are harvested for their resources, bones picked clean, abandoned, and soon become inundated by filth.”
He turned one eye to the backseat.
“It takes a special sort of attention to reverse the usual path of events.”
They had made so many twists and turns that Cedric had no idea of their orientation within the labyrinthian city streets.
Not that he’d had much to begin with.
The sky was fading to reveal night’s peace, but from the inside of the car, it was difficult to even discern in which direction it was setting. The entire sky was aglow.
“Socrates Sculpture Park is one such exception to the usual trend of urban decay. Named for one of the greats—”
He changed his tone, “—and one of my personal favorites—”
“It implores us to ask what kind of beauty can be found amongst the refuse.”
Davian had a flair for the performative.
“It’s certainly better than what came before,” Myrtle added as a dry aside.
“T’was a veritable dump,” Davian concluded, making reference to the unseen sequence of history. “Saved from despair by several passionate artists and philosophers banding together to recognize the potential of this wild land.”
“And what value can we grant—”
Davian made a turn without signaling. “To the unexamined life?”
But no one was prepared to answer his question.
“Hell’s Gate is a mistranslation, you know,” he continued, with no intention to flick his blinker.
The cars were thinning. Cedric took in oxygen in anticipation, awash in an eager hope of stopping. They couldn’t drive forever.
“The Dutch called it ‘Hellegat’,” he pronounced with articulation. “And the Americans didn’t know any better; few among them spoke Dutch. But it has nothing to do with the damned in the slightest.”
Davian pulled his car over toward the curb and stepped on the brake with ample force. Engaging a mechanism with his thumb, he switched the car into park and lifted his foot from the pedal.
“We’re here.”
The nausea that had swelled over Cedric’s consciousness like a swollen boil released its hold as the clean air filled his lungs and healed his anxiety.
He hadn’t quite realized just how stale the interior of the car had become.
The three of them now spread thin among the walkway, and it seemed they alone observed the garden. Cedric, in his innocence, was none-the-wiser.
A cool October wind sped over the East River and dissipated through the trees, rustling the leaves and dampening the discordant sounds of the city. The sun was setting, and the horizon was lit up with hues of bright amber, the edges tickled with hopeful blue.
Cedric had been caught observant in the glow of Manhattan seeming so bright, gargantuan, monolithic —
And distant.
“Can you imagine—” Davian’s voice erupted, and Cedric jumped, not realizing how close the man had been to his ear.
“Fifty-thousand people, right in this very spot?”
Cedric looked toward him, and then wondered where was the very old woman before looking back toward Davian.
“Fifty—” Cedric stammered, unsure of the context. “Thousand?”
Davian was smiling now. “Yes, well, that’s what I’ve been told. 1885: a few years ago. Two-hundred and fifty pounds of explosives buried in veins beneath the rock, all to open up the channel for the boats.”
He considered himself, and added, “I wasn’t here then. I was—”
He looked away.
“Somewhere else.”
“Davian, please,” Myrtle began, seeming to appear from nowhere. “Just because no one’s here doesn’t mean you should feel free to make a fool of yourself.”
Cedric looked around, curiously confirming what she’d stated.
There really was no one but the three of them.
“It’s not too late, Cedric,” Davian said, seeming almost to whisper. “I’m quite sure the champagne hasn’t yet gone flat. It’s a good year. Sharp and dry. You’ll enjoy it.”
Though he was sure the sky was clear and the moon shone in the sky, the three of them seemed to be suspended in a haze, and it seemed Cedric couldn’t see out of the cloud.
But perhaps no one else could see in.
“You studied the sciences in school, didn’t you, Cedric?”
Witness to an apparent non-sequitur, all of a sudden it became quite plain how strange were the man’s clothes, a bizarre suit, like the woman’s but for the wool, drawn up close about the neck.
“I took chemistry,” Cedric began, feeling all at once quite naked in a threadbare t-shirt, searching for words amongst his scattered thoughts. “Biology—”
He paused for a moment, wondering where was Myrtle, and he felt the wind brush his chin as he was interrogated. “…Physics.”
Abruptly, Davian broke into a cacophony of derisive laughter.
“Physics?! You hear that, Myrtle? Your new student thinks he understands physics!”
Cedric bit his tongue, feeling humiliated.
“Davian, tread carefully,” Myrtle spoke with calm warning. “Humility brings gain.”
Davian ignored her, focused instead on Cedric. “Knowing that something is wrong is not the same as knowing what’s right. Surely you must understand that much from what you’ve learned.”
Cedric felt suddenly present, and yet, completely dispersed, cognizant of the incomprehensible conditions that had led him to this very moment, drowning in the very realization. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was.
“Did you have a chance to think about what I asked you earlier?”
Davian very clearly understood his own reference, and yet, Cedric could hardly single out one question from the seemingly hundreds the man had posed.
“You may not realize it yet,” Davian said. “But we see it, Myrtle and I. We see it quite clearly.”
Cedric looked at the woman, her face slack, and then back to Davian.
“You’ve got an aura, Cedric. You may think us weird, and—”
He looked at Myrtle and smirked. “Maybe we are weird—”
“But it rings out like a silver bell. Just like Myrtle said,” and he looked toward her, and then back to Cedric.
“You’re more like us,” Davian asserted, beaming. “And less like them.”
Cedric could not ignore the categories Davian kept using to shape his rhetoric: they and them, we and you, Mortals and—
Who, exactly?
“I think you know it too, don’t you, Cedric?”
Davian could hardly contain himself, and he spoke with increasing confidence, a ball released to hurtle down an incline. “Have you ever felt things just happen to work out as you want them to? Lights turn green when you’re running late? Dealt a full house and the rest of the table’s got nothing to match? Never draw the short straw in a game of—”
“Not everyone’s Talent manifests in such a manner.”
Again, the old woman with that word.
“Of course, of course,” Davian chattered dismissively. “It could be nothing like that. Everyone’s gift is unique, but there are certain similarities. Patterns.”
His eyes seemed to glimmer, completely focused on Cedric.
“The truth is that some people endure reality,” Davian spoke, seeming to look over his shoulders before he continued. “And others—”
“Make it.”