The Tattooed Heart (4 page)

“You are not
my
apprentice,” Daniel said, cutting me off. “I am not
your
master.”

With a nod to Messenger he was gone.

An uncomfortable silence stretched between me and Messenger. Then he took an audible breath and said, “This place is called Parque Lago Azul. It is in Brazil.”

“I recognized it.”

“Did you? Ah.”

I wanted to ask him about Ariadne. The shadow of Ariadne had been on him since our first encounter and at times his obvious devotion to this girl annoyed me. Oriax would no doubt have some snarky remark to offer on the subject, along with the rude suggestion that I was attracted to Messenger in a most un-apprentice-like way, and thus jealous.

Was I jealous of Ariadne for being the object of such love? How could I not be? Who does not want to be loved beyond all reason? Who does not want to be needed as Messenger needed his Ariadne?

For Messenger I felt sadness. He did not speak of his pain, but knowing some small part of what his life had been during his service as Messenger, having touched him for a fleeting second and thus felt viscerally some fraction of what he had felt, I could only be sad.

But another part of me was jealous in a different way, not of him as a boy in love with someone else, but of the fact that he had something to hold on to.

Did I?

Had I ever loved anyone in that way? Could I ever love someone that way?

Yes, I thought, in time. But the one I might someday come to love was not to be touched.

4

WE WERE BACK AT THE IOWA SCHOOL. IT WAS TIME to see what was happening with Trent.

Trent was in the office of the school's vice principal, along with Pete. The vice principal's name—on her desktop nameplate—was Constance Conamarra.

“I've got a report of an incident between the two of you and a Muslim student yesterday,” she was saying.

Messenger and I stood in the corner of the cramped room, invisible, of course, inaudible. But I felt conspicuous just the same.

“That's bull . . . um, not true at all,” Trent said. “Is it, Pete?”

“Totally not true. Whatever that chick said—”

“I never mentioned it was a girl,” Conamarra said.

That stopped Pete, but not Trent, who said, “Whatever. Okay, look, I was just playing around, no big deal.”

“Actually it is quite a big deal. It's a three-day suspension big deal. And I'd be within my rights to make it much worse, believe me.”

Pete groaned but Trent's face turned sullen with rising fury.

“No way,” he said. “You can't suspend me just for grabbing some towel-head's scarf, that's b.s.”

“I can and I have,” Conamarra said.

“This is crap! Special treatment just because she's some terrorist.”

“Samira Kharoti is a terrorist?” The vice principal's voice dripped scorn.

“They're all terrorists. Bunch of foreigners come over here and start getting treated like celebrities. She's not special. She's not some big thing.” He did a hand-waving gesture around that “big thing” that started off sarcastic and ended with a violent thrust. He
practically spit when he did it.

“All you had to do was leave her alone, Trent.
And
this is not your first incident. Last month you—”

“Yeah, whatever,” Trent said, shoved his chair back, and stood up. Conamarra was a small woman, and between Trent and Pete they made an intimidating pair. “Everyone's special, because they're girls or black or Mexican or a towel-head or—”

“That. Is. Enough. You can come back to school on Monday. Until then, you are not to come on to school grounds.”

They left on a wave of muttered curse words and slammed the door behind them.

In the hallway Trent said, “I'm going to find that bitch and give her something to complain about!”

“What are you talking about?” Pete asked.

“That Samira bitch. I'm going to have a little talk with her.”

“Dude . . .”

“What?” Trent snapped.

Pete put up his hands defensively. “Hey, I'm already suspended, I don't want—”

“Are you pussing out on me?”

“I'm not—”

“Are you seriously pussing out on me? A little bit of trouble with Conamarra and you turn into her puppy dog? Oh, oh, pet me on my little head, please pet me, waaaah.”

“Aw, man, it's not like that.”

“That's just what it's like. Don't you know what this is? All of them against
us
. Ni—ers, Jews, Mexicans, now we have to put up with camel-jockeys, too? They're taking over, man, taking over. Taking. Over.”

“Dude, I just don't want to get all into some big thing over this,” Pete pleaded. Then his eyes lit up with a crafty light. “Hey, how come it's just the two of us? Why isn't Marlon down here with us?”

“Conamarra probably got to him first, and he wimped out, just like you're doing. That's the game, man, they play us against each other. Make us weak.”

They had made it most of the way down the hallway when a security guard stepped in front of them and spoke into a walkie-talkie. “I got them both, right here. Yes, ma'am.”

To the boys the guard said, “You two need to get your stuff from your lockers—which are not down this
hallway—and get off the school grounds.”

An argument followed, but in the end Trent and Pete, with their backpacks full, walked off the grounds to Pete's car.

The car had no backseat in which Messenger and I might conveniently wedge ourselves, so we simply walked alongside the car. The fact that I accepted this rewriting of the laws of physics without much shock is, I suppose, a sign that I was adjusting to Messenger's world. Then, too, I had seen this trick before.

We walked alongside the car as it accelerated to thirty and then forty miles an hour. Somehow we were ambling along at forty miles an hour, stopping at stop signs, then effortlessly accelerating despite the fact that when I looked down at my feet they were doing no more than walking. There was no stiff wind in our faces, we were not huffing and puffing, we were simply effortlessly keeping pace with a car moving several times faster than the fastest runner. The car still sounded like a car, and all the other sounds of the road roared in our ears, but I could hear the conversation in the car as clearly and as intimately as
I always heard Messenger's voice.

It was not a conversation I enjoyed hearing. Much of it was a string of angry expletives and racial slurs covering every ethnic group, but mostly focused on Muslims.

And the theme that grew from that obscene anger was one of revenge. Revenge for the suspension from school. But not revenge against the vice principal, no. No, the talk was of getting
them
.

Them
.

“Is there anything more exciting than a pair of angry fools with a
them
to pursue?”

Oriax.

She was beside us, walking along on her absurdly tall and impossibly pointed boots. As always she had a new outfit, not more revealing than the earlier one but every bit as likely to cause a sudden cessation of conversation among those who appreciate female sensuality.

I did not resist the feeling. At that moment my brain was still reeling from the shooting of Aimal and the girls and the teacher. I would have preferred any thought to that memory.

Probably it was shameful that I was so desperate to push that horror aside. But I had already seen far too
many things I'd give anything to purge from my memory. If this was to be my fate I would see many, many more. They would be tattooed on my flesh until all of me was covered. I knew my sanity would be at risk,
was
at risk.

And I had no Ariadne to hold on to.

“What do you think they'll do?” Oriax asked, and clapped her hands in gleeful anticipation.

The answer was not long in coming. Trent pulled a bottle of peppermint schnapps from under his seat.

“Of course!” Oriax said. “I should have guessed. They'll need that.”

Messenger ignored her as he usually did, as though his refusal to engage would discourage her. It was clear he had no power to make her go away. He could lose her sometimes in the swift movement through whatever impossible geography comprised our universe, but he could not forbid her to be present.

I decided on a different approach. If I was truly to become the messenger myself someday, then Oriax would become my problem to deal with.

And curiosity has always been my strength as well as my weakness.

“What do you get out of this, Oriax?” I demanded.

She smiled at me, parting her mauve lips to reveal white teeth that looked a bit sharper than teeth should be. “Excellent question, mini-Messenger. I will answer it if you'll agree to answer one of mine.”

Messenger's eyes flicked a warning, but I took Oriax's challenge. “Okay. I agree.”

“Excellent,” she purred. “What I get out of this is the pleasure of seeing and helping to inflict pain. I savor human despair. I revel in human weakness. But equally, I take enjoyment from offering its opposite: pleasure.” She made a sort of philosophical sound, a worldly sigh, a commentary on life's interesting vagaries. “It's fortunate, really, because in a way it's also my . . . job.” She spoke that word with evident distaste. “I am what I am, and I am what I do, and I enjoy what I do.”

She leaned toward me, very close, and I felt my heart race. It was not a rational thing, nor even strictly a sexual thing, it was something almost like gravity—invisible, inescapable, inevitable. When Oriax did that, I could no more ignore it than I could ignore the heat of the sun or the pull of the earth's core.

“And now, my question for you, mini-Messenger. It
is this: Have you fantasized about our lovely, handsome Messenger? Have you imagined yourself in his arms? In his bed?”

I started to blurt an answer, but Oriax held up a cautioning hand. “If you lie, I will know it. And so will Messenger.”

My mind went instantly to a dream I'd had, one of my more unsettling, though not at all terrifying, dreams.

No one should be held responsible for their dreams.

“I never imagined Messenger
having
a bed,” I managed to say as a blush rose up my neck to burn my cheeks.

“Hah!” She seemed delighted with my pathetic evasion. She knew she had landed a blow. She knew she had made things awkward between Messenger and me. Awkward to say the least.

She was, as she'd said, reveling in human weakness.

Darkness had fallen completely by the time the car pulled into a cemetery that was much more opulent than the one we'd visited so far away. The car crept along manicured paths between stark marble testimonials to lost love. There were impressive marble crypts and small granite crosses. Here and there a Star of David.

“There!” a slurring Pete said, and pointed.

Trent stopped the car and the two boys stumbled out. The sun had gone down and the shadows were growing long.

We followed them onto the springy grass to a modest granite headstone. It read
Mohammed Marwat, beloved husband, father, brother.
And a fairly recent date of death. It was decorated with an engraved crescent and star.

“Yeah. Raghead,” Trent said.

Pete offered some expletives of support.

Then Trent kicked the headstone. His reward was pain that had him hopping and cursing. He limped back to Pete's car and rummaged in the trunk until he found a tire iron and a can of red spray paint.

With the tire iron he began digging at the foundation of the stone, wedging the crowbar end beneath it and, finally, toppling it onto its back while Pete kept watch.

More loud cursing.

“And now, the paint,” Oriax said with a wink.

Trent shook the paint can, musing about his message. In the end he decided on his favorite word,
Raghead
, which he misspelled as
Rag-hed
. Then added an expletive. And finally the words,
Go home
.

“And there we have your basic grave desecration,” Oriax said with satisfaction. “Are we really all here for a little grave desecration? This is your mission, Messenger? Trivial.”

And then Trent urinated on the stone and Pete did likewise.

“Okay,” Oriax said with tolerant humor, “now, it's an enhanced grave desecration. But really, Messenger, are you going to subject these two cretins to the full-on Messenger treatment? I'm surprised you'd want to show mini-Messenger the true pitiless savagery of your absurd goddess's so-called justice.”

I expected Messenger to ignore her. But instead I found him looking at her very thoughtfully. And Oriax didn't like it. She seemed to blanch, although that's too strong an image for the very slight, barely noticeable pullback.

I wondered if she was frightened of Messenger. But no, in the times I'd seen them together she had never shown any fear. But she had just now winced—and again, that's too strong an image for a change of expression that was so well concealed as to be almost unnoticeable.

Almost unnoticeable.

And yet I was sure that she had done something or said something she now regretted.

“Well, I have other, friendlier folk to see,” Oriax said lamely, and disappeared.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Indeed. What
was
that about?” He repeated my question while, of course, offering no answer.

“Thanks for clearing that up,” I grumbled, just relieved to have something other than my fantasies, my
alleged
fantasies, as the main focus of conversation.

He sighed and relented. “Not all of us who live in this world beyond the normal have the same abilities and gifts,” Messenger said. “Oriax's kind sometimes sees further than we are able.”

“Further? As in deeper into? Or as in further away?”

He shook his head very slightly. “Further ahead. Time, not space.”

In my mind I heard
Pop pop pop
. I saw brain and bone and blood. I sucked in air but seemed to be suffocating, as though the air held no oxygen. I realized I was trembling.

I realized as well that the murder of Aimal, and the
girls, and their teacher, was yet to come. It was in the future, still. Right now, across the world, Aimal was alive.

Somehow this led to that, though the how of it was not yet clear to me. What was the Isthil gospel that Messenger had quoted to Oriax?
‘If you prick a finger with a poisoned thorn say not that you are innocent when the heart dies.'
Was this the pricked finger?

I did not want to show Messenger any more weakness, which is how I thought of my fainting at the school yard. If I was to be Watson to his Holmes, then I had to be able to hold my own. Keep up. I clenched my fists together behind my back and squeezed until deep crescents were pushed into my palms and my forearms ached. But I hid it. I pushed the murder sickness down inside.

“Well,” I said, “where are we off to next?”

He stood silent in deep thought, ignoring me. Finally he must have reached some kind of conclusion because he said, “That's enough for now. You'll be wanting food and rest.”

He was quite right, but I wondered whether he had gleaned that from an unwanted intrusion into my
mind—he was certainly capable of that—or whether he was just noticing the sag of my shoulders and the unconcealable agitation on my face. Either way I found myself alone in my . . . I must find something to call the place where I ate and slept and showered. It seemed absurd to call it home, but it was all the home I had for now.