From the Dust Returned (6 page)

Anuba was there, curled in a soft round ball of sleep, all adream with many fine fish swimming in freshets of dream.

The land was painted with moonlight now. In the big House he could hear the ribald laughter as "Mirror, Mirror" was played with a huge mirror. Celebrants roared as they tried to identify those of themselves whose reflections did not, had not
ever,
and
never would
appear in a glass.

Timothy broke Arach's web on his lips:

"Now what?"

Falling to the floor, Arach scuttled swiftly toward the House, until Timothy trapped and tucked him back in his ear. "All right. Here we go, for fun, no matter what!"

He ran. Behind, Mouse ran small, Anuba large. Half across the yard, a green tarpaulin fell from the sky and pinned him flat with silken wing. "Uncle!"

"Timothy." Einar's wings clamored like kettledrums. Timothy, a thimble, was set on Einar's shoulder. "Cheer up, nephew. How much richer things are for you. Our world is dead. All tombstone-gray. Life's best to those who live least, worth more per ounce, more per ounce!"

From midnight on, Uncle Einar soared him about the House, from room to room, weaving, singing, as they fetched A Thousand Times Great Grandmere down, wrapped in her Egyptian cerements, roll on roll of linen bandage coiled about her fragile archaeopteryx bones. Silently she stood, stiff as a great loaf of Nile bread, her eyes flinting a wise, silent fire. At the predawn breakfast, she was propped at the head of the long table and suffered sips of incredible wines to wet her dusty mouth.

The wind rose, the stars burned, the dances quickened. The many darknesses roiled, bubbled, vanished, reappeared.

"Coffins" was next. Coffins, in a row, surrounded by marchers, timed to a flute. One by one coffins were removed. The scramble for their polished interiors eliminated two, four, six, eight marchers, until one coffin remained. Timothy circled it cautiously with his fey-cousin, Rob. The flute stopped. Gopher to hole, Timothy lunged at the box. Rob popped in first! Applause!

Laughter and chat.

"How is Uncle Einar's sister? She of the wings."

"Lotte flew over Persia last week and was shot with arrows. A bird for a banquet. A bird!"

Their laughter was a cave of winds.

"And Carl?"

"The one who lives under bridges? Poor Carl. No place in all Europe for him. New bridges are rebuilt with Holy Water blessings! Carl is homeless. There are refugees tonight beyond counting."

"True!
All
the bridges, eh? Poor Carl."

"Listen!"

The party held still. Far off, a town clock chimed 6 A.M. The Homecoming was done. In time with the clock striking, a hundred voices began to sing songs that were centuries old. Uncles and aunts twined their arms around each other, circling, singing, and somewhere in the cold distance of morning the town clock stopped its chimes and was still.

Timothy sang.

He knew no words, no tune, yet he sang and the words and tune were pure, round and high and beautiful.

Finished, he gazed up to the High Attic of Egyptian sands and dreams.

"Thanks, Cecy," he whispered.

A wind blew. Her voice echoed from his mouth, "Do you forgive me?"

Then he said, "Cecy. Forgiven."

Then he relaxed and let his mouth move as it wished, and the song continued, rhythmically, purely, melodiously.

Goodbyes were said in a great rustling. Mother and Father stood in grave happiness at the door to kiss each departing cheek. The sky, beyond, colored and shone in the east. A cold wind entered. They must all rise and fly west to beat the sun around the world. Make haste, oh, make haste!

Again Timothy listened to a voice in his head and said, "Yes, Cecy. I would like that. Thanks."

And Cecy helped him into one body after another. Instantly, he felt himself inside an ancient cousin's body at the door, bowing and pressing lips to Mother's pale fingers, looking out at her from a wrinkled leather face. Then he stepped out into a wind that seized and blew him in a flurry of leaves away up over the awakening hills.

With a snap, Timothy was behind another face, at the door, all farewells. It was Cousin William's face.

Cousin William, swift as smoke, loped down a dirt road, red eyes burning, fur pelt rimed with morning, padded feet falling with silent sureness, panting over a hill into a hollow, and then suddenly in flight, flying away.

Then Timothy welled up in the tall umbrella shape of Uncle Einar to look out from his wildly amused eyes as he picked up a tiny pale body:
Timothy
! Picking up
himself
! "Be a good boy, Timothy. See you soon!"

Swifter than borne leaves, with a webbed thunder of wings, faster than the lupine thing of the country road, going so swiftly the earth's features blurred and the last stars tilted, like a pebble in Uncle Einar's mouth, Timothy flew, joined on half his flight.

Then slammed back in his own flesh.

The shouting and the laughing faded and were almost lost. Everybody was embracing and crying and thinking how the world was becoming less a place for them. There had been a time when they had met every year, but now decades passed with no reconciliation. "Don't forget, we meet in Salem in 2009!" someone cried.

Salem. Timothy's numbed mind touched the word. Salem—2009. And there would be Uncle Fry and Grandma and Grandfather and A Thousand Times Great Grandmere in her withered cerements. And Mother and Father and Cecy and all the rest. But would
he
be alive that long?

With one last withering wind blast, away they all shot, so many scarves, so many fluttery mammals, so many seared leaves, so many wolves loping, so many whinings and clusterings, so many midnights and dawns and sleeps and wakenings.

Mother shut the door.

Father walked down into the cellar.

Timothy walked across the crepe-littered hall. His head was down, and in passing the party mirror he saw the pale mortality of his face. He shivered.

"Timothy," said Mother.

She laid a hand on his face. "Son," she said. "We love you. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if you leave us one day." She kissed his cheek. "And if and when you die your bones will lie undisturbed, we'll see to that, you'll lie at ease forever, and I'll come see you every All Hallows' Eve and tuck you in more secure."

The halls echoed to polished lids creaking and slamming shut.

The House was silent. Far away, the wind went over a hill with its last cargo of small dark flights, echoing, chittering.

He walked up the steps, one by one, crying to himself all the way.

The four cousins—Peter, William, Philip, and Jack—had lingered on after the Homecoming because a cloud of doom and melancholy and disbelief hung over Europe. There was no room in the dark House, so they were stashed almost upside-down in the barn, which shortly thereafter burned.

Like most of the Family they were not ordinary.

To say that most of them slept days and worked at odd occupations nights would fall short of commencement.

To remark that some of them could read minds, and some fly with lightnings to land with leaves, would be an understatement.

To add that some could not be seen in mirrors while others could be found in multitudinous shapes, sizes, and textures in the same glass would merely repeat gossip that veered into truth.

These boys resembled their uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents by the toadstool score and the mushroom dozen.

They were just about every color you could mix in one restless night.

Some were young and others had been around since the Sphinx first sank its stone paws in tidal sands.

And all four were in love and in need for one special Family member.

Cecy.

Cecy. She was the reason, the real reason, the central reason for the wild cousins to circle her and stay. For she was as seedpod full as a pomegranate. She was all the senses of all the creatures in the world. She was all the motion-picture houses and stage-play theaters and all the art galleries of all time.

Ask her to yank your soul like an aching tooth and shoot it into clouds to cool your spirit, and yanked you were, drawn high to drift in the mists.

Ask her to seize that same soul and bind it in the flesh of a tree, and you awoke the next morning with birds singing in your green head.

Ask to be pure rain and you fell on everything. Ask to be the moon and suddenly you looked down to see your pale light painting lost towns the color of tombstones and spectral ghosts.

Cecy. Who extracted your soul and pulled forth your impacted wisdom, and could transfer it to animal, vegetable, or mineral; name your poison.

No wonder the cousins lingered.

And along about sunset, before the dreadful fire, they climbed to the attic to stir her bed of Egyptian sands with their breath.

"Well," said Cecy, eyes shut, a smile playing about her mouth. "What would your pleasure be?"

"I—" said Peter.

"Maybe—" said William and Philip.

"Could you—" said Jack.

"Take you on a visit to the local insane asylum," guessed Cecy, "to peek inside people's corkscrew heads?"

"Yes!"

"Done!" said Cecy. "Go lie on your cots in the barn. Over, up, and—out!"

Like corks, their souls popped. Like birds, they flew. Like bright needles, they shot in various crazed asylum ears.

"Ah!" they cried in delight.

While they were gone, the barn burned.

In all the shouting and confusion, the running for water, the general ramshackle hysteria, everyone forgot who was in the barn or what the high-flying cousins and Cecy, asleep, might be up to. So deep in her rushing dreams was she, that she felt neither the flames, nor the dread moment when the walls fell and four human-shaped torches self-destroyed. A clap of thunder banged across country, shook the skies, knocked the wind-blown essences of cousins through mill-fans, while Cecy, with a gasp, sat straight up and gave one shriek that shot the cousins home. All four, at the moment of concussion, had been in various asylum bins, prying trap-door skulls to peek in at maelstroms of confetti the colors of madness, the dark rainbows of nightmare.

"What happened?" cried Jack from Cecy's mouth.

"What!" said Philip, moving her lips.

"My god." William stared from her eyes.

"The barn burned," said Peter. "We're lost!"

The Family, soot-faced in the smoking yard, turned like a traveling minstrel's funeral and stared up at Cecy in shock.

"Cecy?" called Mother, wildly. "Is someone
with
you?"

"Me, Peter!" shouted Peter from her lips.

"Philip!"

"William!"

"Jack!"

The souls counted off from Cecy's tongue.

The Family waited.

Then, as one, the four young men's voices asked the final, most dreadful question:

"Didn't you save just
one
body?"

The Family sank an inch into the earth, burdened with a reply they could not give.

"But—" Cecy held on to her elbows, touched her own chin, her mouth, her brow, inside which four live ghosts wrestled for room. "But—what'll I
do
with them?" Her eyes searched all those faces below in the yard. "My cousins can't stay! They can't stand around in my
head
!"

What she cried after that, or what the cousins babbled, crammed like pebbles under her tongue, or what the Family said, running like burned chickens in the yard, was lost.

With Judgment Day thunders, the rest of the barn fell.

With a vast whisper the ashes blew away in an October wind that leaned this way and that on the attic roof.

"It seems to me," said Father.

"Not seems, but
is
!" said Cecy, eyes shut.

"We must farm the cousins out. Find temporary hospices until such time as we can cull new bodies—"

"The quicker the better," said four voices from Cecy's mouth, now high, now low, now
two
gradations between.

Father continued in darkness. "There must be
someone
in the Family with a small room in the backside of their cerebellum! Volunteers!"

The Family sucked in an icy breath and stayed silent. Great Grandmere, far above in her own attic place, suddenly whispered: "I hereby solicit, name, and nominate the oldest of the old!"

As if their heads were on a single string, everyone turned to blink at a far corner where their ancient Nile River Grandpere leaned like a dry bundle of two-millennia-before-Christ wheat.

The Nile ancestor husked, "No!"

"Yes!" Grandmere shut her sand-slit eyes, folded her brittle arms over her tomb-painted bosom. "You have all the time in the world."

"Again, no!" The mortuary wheat rustled.

"This," Grandmere murmured, "is the Family, all strange-fine. We walk nights, fly winds and airs, wander storms, read minds, work magic, live forever or a thousand years, whichever. In sum, we're Family, to be leaned on, turned to, when—"

"No, no!"

"Hush." One eye as large as the Star of India opened, burned, dimmed, died. "It's not proper, four wild men in a slim girl's head. And there's much
you
can teach the cousins. You thrived long before Napoleon walked in and ran
out
of Russia, or Ben Franklin died of pox. Fine if the boys' souls were lodged in
your
ear some while. It might straighten their spines. Would you deny this?"