Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales (36 page)

“I’d never do anything to hurt you.” He says the words as if no one has ever spoken anything truer, and I can still see the boy I loved more than anything.

The one I left behind.

I want to tell him I never stopped thinking about him, but I can’t.

“How did you end up working for Castillo?”

He looks down at the floor. “I took off with Connor after everything happened.
There weren’t a lot of jobs for a seventeen-year-old dropout.”

The door scrapes against the concrete, and Castillo steps inside. His suit jacket is gone, the sleeves of his expensive dress shirt rolled up. He grabs Will by the throat, the tendons in his hands straining. “That’s a sad story, William. Did you tell her
how I hid you from the cops after they found that piece of shit foster father
of yours stabbed to death?”

Will’s body jerks in the chair.

“How I gave you a job so you could put your kid brother through school?” Castillo squeezes harder, and the color drains from Will’s face.

“Stop it!” I shout. “He has nothing to do with this.”

Castillo releases the iron grip, and Will gasps for air.

His expression hardens, and Castillo kicks Will in the chest. “I thought I taught
you something about loyalty.”

The chair falls back, and Will’s head hits the concrete floor and lolls to one side.

Castillo walks over and stands in front of my chair, a sadistic smile on his face. “You’re gonna tell me who you’ve been reporting to and exactly how much they know, or I’m gonna lock you up in the towers and let every junkie in the Triangle screw you.”

Something moves in the corner
of the room.

The Soul Collector steps forward without a sound and stands only a few feet behind Castillo. His eyes find mine, silently asking me the question I’ve answered twice before.

“I’ll give you anything you want,” I say.

Castillo thinks I’m talking to him. “I know you will.”

The Soul Collector looks me in the eye. “You have to say it.”

Castillo whips around. “What the hell?”

“My soul!”
I scream. “You can have my soul.”

Castillo goes for his gun, but the Soul Collector is faster. He reaches out, and his hand breaks through Castillo’s rib cage like it’s butter. Castillo’s body sways and drops to the floor.

The Soul Collector stands before me, holding Castillo’s
heart in his hand. He glances down at Castillo’s crumpled form. “I’m taking this one for now.”

He leans in and kisses
me, Castillo’s blood running down my neck where the Soul Collector’s hand cradles my head. “I’ll be back in one year to collect what you owe, Petra. Make sure you’re ready.”

Will and I disappeared together that night—the way we should have so many years ago. We left our guns and regrets behind and started over with nothing but each other. We didn’t talk about what happened in the basement, and
I didn’t tell him about the stranger who saved our lives. I spent the next year trying to forget the Soul Collector, praying that another debt would outweigh mine. As the months went by, he started to fade like a dream you can’t quite remember—a memory blurred around the edges just enough to forget.

It’s still early when I come back from the farmers’ market. Will usually sleeps late, which gives
me time to make breakfast. I want everything to be perfect today—the day I tell him he’s going to be a father.

When I open the door, I’m surprised to hear voices in the kitchen. We don’t have many friends, and they never stop by unannounced. Realization tugs at the back of my mind, but it’s eclipsed by anticipation of the news I can’t wait to share.

When I see him, I drop the paper bag in my
arms and a bottle of milk explodes on the floor. In a single moment, a day I never wanted to forget has turned into a day that I hoped would never come.

The Soul Collector sits across from Will at our kitchen table.

Will’s face is a haunting mask of fear and pain. I wonder how much the Soul Collector told him.

“I’m sorry, Petra.” The Soul Collector stands and extends his hand. “But it’s time.”

“Please—” I’m prepared to beg, but he shakes his head, silencing me.

“You owe a debt, and I have to collect. It’s not something I can forgive.”

Will stands and walks toward us, his every movement and expression an act of determination. He looks so broken, and I know I’m the one holding the bat.

“Can we have a minute?” he asks.

The Soul Collector nods and moves to the door, waiting inside the
archway. There’s something unfamiliar in the stranger’s blue eyes. Is it sadness?

The tears fall before I can stop them. “Will, I’m so sorry. I should have told you.”

“Shh. I understand why you did it.” He takes my face in his hands and looks at me the way no one else ever has—as if I have real value. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

I stare at his beautiful face and wonder if he would have
made a different decision if faced with the same choices.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever loved” are the only words I can manage.

Tears run down his cheeks, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him cry. He presses his lips against mine, telling me all the things we don’t have time to say.

Will pulls away and walks toward the stranger who killed for me, and ultimately saved both
our lives. I know Will wants to find a way out of this, but I’ve seen enough to know that we’re beyond that point.

I’ve made thousands of choices in my life that led me to this moment.

Killing Jimmy was the first.

“Will, there’s nothing else—” I can’t finish. It feels like my body has run out of breath and I’m already dead.

Soulless.

Will is standing next to the Soul Collector, whose hand
is already on the front door, and suddenly I understand. I try to make my legs move, but I’m frozen in place.

Will walks across the threshold backward, smiling at me.

The Soul Collector stops and turns to me. “A sacrifice is worth far more than a trade, Petra.”

“Will!” I tear across the room and reach the door just as it slams shut. The latch hasn’t even clicked into place before I throw it
open again.

The sidewalk stretches out in front of me.

Empty.

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE
…………………………………

When I was a child, my great-grandmother spent hours reading to me from
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
, not the sanitized American versions but the original stories in all their dark and terrifying glory. “Rumpelstiltskin” was always one of my favorites. It was only after I reread the story as an adult that I realized what else was hidden beneath the layers of folklore, wish
fulfillment, and straw that turned to gold in the right hands.

At its core, “Rumpelstiltskin” is the story of a father who trades his daughter to a king, knowing the king will kill her when he finds out that the girl does not possess the magical skill the man has promised. As a result, the girl must trade with Rumpelstiltskin to save her own life.

Before I became a writer, I taught in the inner
city. I watched poverty and drugs ravage families and communities, robbing people of their choices and often their lives. “The Soul Collector” revisits the classic fairy tale I loved so much as a child, juxtaposing my fascination with the paranormal against a backdrop of poverty and drugs, to explore other ways women are “traded”—and the ways we trade ourselves. The crossroads demon (or Soul Collector,
as I call him in this story) is the Rumpelstiltskin of the urban fantasy world. He can solve your problems and even grant you wishes—for a price. The question is always the same: What are you willing to trade?

S
ALADIN
A
HMED

I.

Which of all earthly things he most did craue;

And euer as he
rode, his hart did earne

To proue his puissance in battell braue

Vpon his foe, and his new force to learne;

Holiness has murdered my brave brother.

Holiness has mangled my mind and my name.

Holiness has stolen God’s love from me.

I am walking a winding road of pale stone. Who am I? Where am I? I have answers, but they are forged falsehoods. For … days? Years? My brothers and I have been
forced to live in this world that is not our world. And I have half forgotten my own.

The one who abducted us—the mailed man-thing called
Holiness—calls this place
Albion.
He calls it Faerie Lond. He calls it the Glorious Isle. The sunlight here is cold and lifeless, the trees are strange, and the birds have evil eyes.

He has brought us here to test himself. To prove himself a worthy knight.

To hunt us.

I do not know how he brought us to this land of blood and iron masks. I know only that I am a real man trapped in a mad landscape of living lessons.

My brothers and I were spirited here from my home in … Damascus? Yes, praise be to God that I can remember
that
. The sound of the street preachers, and the smells of the spice vendors’ stalls.
Damascus.

We were sipping tea in a room
with green carpets, and I was laughing at a jest that … that
someone
was making. Who? The face, the voice, the name have been stolen from me. All I know is that my brothers and I suddenly found ourselves in this twisted place, each aware of the others’ fates, but unable to find one another. Unable to find any escape.

Now my eldest brother has been slain. And my next eldest brother has disappeared.

Who am I? I do not know how he changed our names. But in this world of lions and giants and the blinding shine of armor, I am called Joyless, as if it were a name.

It was not my name. It
is
not my name. But this is
his
place, and it follows his commands.

And thus, now, here, Joyless is my name, and Joyless has always been my name. This place, this
Albion
, has scrawled its hateful sigils over
even the past. Now, when I remember my mother’s voice calling for me across the small souk, I can only
hear her voice of rock and honey calling “Joyless! Joyless, come here at once!” Now my father’s last whispered words to me as sunlight streamed in the wood-lattice window, his last words all those years ago, were “Joyless, my beloved, thanks be to God that you are such a smart boy.” It is the
only name I can find in my mind now. Whatever name I was once called, whatever name I once called
myself
, has been stolen.

Joyless.

A part of me knows it to be false. Some small, near-dead piece of my soul knows that I was once a joyful man. Sometimes God grants me … flashes of the man I once was. Of what
joy
was. The feel of the falconer’s glove as I hunted with my beautiful birds. The jeweled
light on the water the first time I saw the sea. The old poet at court granting my scribblings unfeigned praise. These are the sunbeams that break the murk for a moment here and there.

“Memories” is too weak a word. They are like lightning. Like the pain a marked thief or maimed soldier still feels in a hand that has been lost. But they are so fleeting that they do, in fact, become flashes of
pain. And each day they fade. Fewer. Farther. Each day it becomes easier to succumb to the grim magic of this place that has claimed my kin.

To forget joy.

To forget who I am.

II.

Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,

Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde,

Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,

The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde;

I am walking along a road of pale
stone.

I am hunted and I am growing mad, but at least I live.

My brave brother—ten years older, he was, and like my second father—is dead. My beatific brother, whom I can only call Faithless, though that should not be his name. He has been murdered by a madman who calls himself a knight. A butcher who is called Saint in this place.

What to call this killer? He has stolen our names and given
us pissed-in husks as replacements. He calls us Sarazin.
Sans
and
Sans
and
Sans.
But he has kept names, so many names, for himself. He is called Redcrosse. He is called the Knight. He is called the Saint.

He is called Holiness.

It takes all my power to break the spell of this place and its false names for even a moment. To snatch the breath to call him not Knight, but abductor. To call him not
Saint, but brother-killer.

I walk past a twisted thing of moss and bark, flesh and tears—a man? A tree? Redcrosse has filled this place with such horrors. To teach himself lessons. To teach himself what it is to be a Saint.

I keep to the road.

He is using this strange place to test himself. To prove himself to his God and his Queen. And killing us is part of his test, it seems. He has hunted
us, or set his creatures on us. The lion. The dwarf. The arch-magi.

But it was Redcrosse himself that struck down my brother.

I was not there when they fought, but the vision came to me, emblazoned across the sickly sky of this place. Sent as a gruesome taunt, perhaps, by Redcrosse himself. I heard the sounds of plate and mail. I saw the Saint’s hulking mass as he entered the dueling circle.
His muscle and metal. His blood-seeking sword.

And I saw my poor brother, lean as a walking-stick. I watched
him kneel to pray before the battle, watched his confused, terrified expression as he found that he had somehow lost the words. Faithless, this cruel knight had renamed him.