Chapter Six Violet #4
“What’s your plan for the future, then, when we get out of here?
” I’m genuinely curious. I attempt a joke.
“A life of crime?” I’m startled when he visibly flinches and then immediately tries to hide it, his body bracing against the reflexive action.
Guilt prickles me. I’m not sure why he’s reacting like this, but I know there’s a good reason.
I try again. “It must be nice to have your future wide open.”
“It’s not so open,” he mutters. “Though…I’d…well, I plan to go to Santa Fe. After we’re out of here and after my sister and the baby are safe.”
“Santa Fe?” I’m fascinated. “Why?”
“Saw a postcard of it, once. Seems like a lot of open space. And I guess…I don’t know…it looked like freedom.”
Ren’s words are melancholic, somehow hopeful and sad at once.
I don’t fully understand but I want to. In fact, I’ve never wanted to understand someone more.
Staring at him, I need to take a breath.
In his own way, Ren seems made from moonlight.
It forms tiny coins inside his irises, reflecting off them.
It dashes across his cheekbones and shines in his hair.
I have the deep, instinctual need to move closer to him. His lips are near. If I just—
A whistle runs through the air.
The whistle from earlier.
I look around and so does Ren. It’s oddly loud, much louder than I would think humanly possible. It runs across the water, mixing with the creek’s babble and providing a counter-note, playing along with the desert’s tune, and then distinguishing itself from it.
“Someone must be over there.” Ren points at the bend in the stream.
“Let’s go see,” I respond. “We can stay behind the brush.”
“Yeah?” Ren watches my face with a hint of amusement. “Like a stalker?”
“No! Like a detective. Like Nancy Drew.”
“Well, lead the way, Miss Drew.”
Carefully, I slide off the rock. My deer heats up in my pocket. We stay close to the brush and carefully round the bend of the creek.
A figure stands by the water’s edge—it’s the man from earlier. He’s wearing the same blue kimono. Its threads glow with the same brilliance of the night sky, and his skin, shockingly, is luminous. It shines as though it contains its own light source. I stare, completely mesmerized.
“I’ve seen him before,” Ren breathes. “He was on the same bus as me from Santa Anita Racetrack. Does he…How old does he look to you?”
“How old?” I squint at the man, confused by the question. “It’s sort of hard to tell, now that I think about it. He doesn’t have any gray hair or wrinkles, so he can’t be that old. Why?”
“Because I think…I think only we see him that way. Everyone else sees an old man.”
“They do?” My mind reels. “How could that be possible?”
“Don’t know. I thought I was going crazy. You’re the only other person I know of who sees him how I do.”
The man walks to the edge of the creek. As he bends down, his reflection spreads across it, its bizarre incandescence illuminating the water all the way down to the smooth stones cobbling the bottom.
It outlines the forms of small fish swimming by and bright green algae growing between the stones.
Carefully, he runs his hands through his long hair, beguiled by his expression.
Light cascades down the strands. His long locks settle on either side of his face, and he smiles.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs to his reflection.
“Even like this, you are beautiful.” His voice cracks and he sniffs.
I’ve heard countless people fighting, weeping, and shouting.
But this man speaks differently. Melodramatic devastation tinges his tone, as though he’s playing the lead role in a Shakespeare tragedy.
He frowns, touching his cheek. A small crack runs down the side of his face in the exact way hairline fractures appear on a porcelain cup before it shatters.
I don’t recall seeing it before. My stomach turns at the sight.
Who is this man? How can he glow like an earthbound star?
The man extends his hands out over the creek.
The water starts to froth. Bubbles swirl and roll their way to the top, where they gurgle and pop.
Moonlight dances through them until the creek is as riotous as the sky above. “I summon you!” the man cries.
I glance almost desperately at Ren, suddenly certain I’m imagining everything. His eyes are as wide as mine are. My deer grows warmer.
A trout emerges from the font. The man snatches it with the speed and accuracy of a striking viper. It’s like a piece of the moon, silvery and shiny in his grip—and he is, too, just as silvery and shiny. Lips part to show pointed teeth. Every single one is an eyetooth meant for tearing.
As he bites off the fish’s head, dark liquid skims across the silvery scales.
Blood. Delicate bones, interlocked like roots, emerge from where the head used to be, along with fleshy meat and torn scales.
He spits out the head and tosses the fish’s body back into the creek, where the current carries it away.
Next to the man, a fountain springs up. I’m dazed, terrified, and confused.
I’m seeing something I don’t comprehend.
Otōsan always spoke of magic and its deep wells that run through the generations of our family because of our service to the gods.
For the first time, it has spilled into my life.
I don’t know whether to fear or embrace it.
Impossibly, the fountain builds, growing taller and bubblier. The man’s hands guide it up, as though it’s drawn on invisible, magical strings. The water swirls away from the creek rocks and into the funnel. Pebbles, tumbled smooth, are exposed, shiny, wet, and slick.
The man’s shadow suddenly rises, animating like it did before.
This time, it stretches up and splits into dozens of long arms with even longer fingers.
Whatever power the man has over the water fails.
The spouting arch of water plunges back into the riverbed.
It crashes up over the sides and over the man.
He lets out a growl of rage. The unbound water rushes downward to us.
Tossing his head back, he cries to the moon, “Will even the wastes of Yomi deny me?”
I step back. A twig snaps under my foot.
The shadowy hands disappear. The man’s head turns toward us.
I shrink back against Ren. The man—god, whatever he is—glides in our direction.
Darkness fills his eye sockets so that there’s no white, only blackness and an amber horizontal dash of a pupil.
The glow of his skin becomes more brilliant.
It has as much icy blue in it as whitish silver.
And I smell him. Smoky incense mixes with the strongest notes of rose and jasmine that I have ever inhaled, along with an odd wetness, as though he’s taken on the scent of water itself.
Under it all is the smell of fish. Stringy bits of trout hang from his mouth and speckle his chin.
“I think we should run,” Ren says breathlessly, his arm protectively wrapping around my shoulder.
“Wait—” The man gets closer. I lose my courage. “Let’s go!”
We turn and run. Brushy ground spins away beneath my feet and I think he’s right upon us. Scabrous rocks whirl by. Ren keeps pace beside me. I hear a howl that sounds neither human nor animal. The world bounces around me with every jolting step, but I dare to glance over my shoulder.
The man hasn’t followed us.
Instead, he’s a glowing smudge by the creek.
He’s arched backward, hands out at his sides as though in offering, neck tilted so far back his head is almost parallel to his shoulders.
From his throat comes a wordless howl. It’s loud in volume but bass in octave, so much so that it sounds like a finger striking the lowest note on a piano, over and over.
Even after he’s obscured from sight and the howl doesn’t reach us anymore, the sound replays in my head. I don’t think it’ll ever stop. No matter where I go from now on, a splinter of this night—of seeing the man and his wonders—will come with me, glowing beneath my skin like an electrified vein.