Carnivale Mechaniste

Chapter 2: Opened

He'd ridden three buses, walked several miles, and was waiting for yet another bus, one that would take him out of suburbia to the city center. Jax hadn't ever ridden a Smartbus before. They gave him the creeps, and made him nervous. The drivers were nuts and the people that rode them were weird. The bus finally appeared in a swirl of exhaust and squealing brakes; Jax paid his fare and sat down near the back, turned his iPod up louder. He closed his eyes, scrooched down further in the seat and let himself drift. He was approaching that warm, muzzy, heavy-headed feeling that comes just before you fall asleep from pure exhaustion, when he felt a finger tap his shoulder. He opened one eye, pulled an earbud out.

“Can't sleep yet, sonny-boy,” came a rasping, lilting voice. The speaker was an old woman wearing several layers of moth-eaten sweaters that smelled of patchouli and lavender, a crinkling plastic bag was tied beneath her chin, and she held a huge, old-looking bag on her lap. Carpetbag, he thought it might called. It was like a doctor's bag from the old black-and-white movies, but covered in faded purple flower-print carpet, with tattered, peeling leather around the opening, and on the handles and seams. The woman, who looked like she might be at least 500 years old, peered at him with eyes that were bright, piercing blue, like chips taken from a clear sky at midday. “Ain't safe yet, young'un, no ya ain't. Best keep alert, watch for what ya don't expect, were I you. You shine like the brightest beacon, to those what have the right eyes to see. I'm a harmless old Flash, me, can't do nothin', but if I can sees that what you got in you, then there's those that can see as would hurt you, as would strip you clean of your very soul, could they but get their claws on you.” She was jabbering on in her odd accent as if he knew who she was, or what she was talking about.

“Lady...I don't know what you're talking about,” he said, trying not to sound too rude.

“I can see that, young'un. I can see that right enough. And that's what makes it all the more dangerous for you. I'll tell you what. Take this,” she pushed a greasy, much-folded rectangle of paper into his hands, a flier of some sort. “Find the carnival, boy. It's the best bet for a new one as young and innocent as you.” Jax looked at the flier. It announced something called “Carnivale Machaniste,” which seemed to be a traveling carnival of some sort.

“A carnival? I hate carnivals.”

“Heh. Shows how much you know. This ain't no normal carnival. For one thing, you're saying it wrong. It's a European-soundin' thing. You gotta say it right, even in your own head, or you'll never find it. It's part of the magic. It's like this: Carni-VAHL Mecka-NEEST.”

“Part of the magic?”

“Oh don't act stupid, son. I can tell plain as elephant noses that you've got magic. You've just opened it up, and you're all confused and discombobulated and such-like. An' mebbe you didn't even know you was magic, but you are, all the same. Now you just listen to ole Gramma Lucy. I been around a few blocks in my life, and I know what I'm talking about.” Jax's disbelief and confusion must have shown on his face. “Look, boy. I'll start at the beginning, make it as easy as I can in the short time we got. Magic is real. That's first. It ain't things like sawing no hussies in half or makin' the Statue of Liberty disappear or none o' that nonsense. It's bone and flesh magic, blood and guts and steel and silk magic, rhythm and music and beauty and terror magic. The Carnivale is a carnival, a marketplace, a whole city that travels everywhere, and everywhen. Don't look at me with that sass, boy. Yes, I said everywhen. It goes back and forth in time, and I don't even know what or where else. Like I said, I'm just a Flash, a person what can see magic, but can't do none at all. A between sort. It ain't all roses and unicorns, though, I should tell you. I've heard stories about the Carnivale Mechaniste that would make your short and curlies shrivel, but I can't say as they're true. I hope not, but you never know. Now, here's your stop comin' up, son. Get off, turn right, go down about three blocks, and you'll see the Carnivale, can't miss it. It might be tricky at first, you gotta look at it with magic eyes. You gotta really see it. Now go! Remember old Lucy in your prayers at night, son.” Jax felt himself getting off the bus, his head whirling and and his thoughts running at warp speed. Magic? Well, that was pretty much undeniable, considering what had happened with his dad. Unless this was a dream? It all seemed so real, so...not a dream. If he started question his sanity now, he might never stop, and that just wasn't an option.

No better plan presented itself, so Jax put Otep on his iPod and turned right as the bus rumbled off in a cloud of exhaust. Two blocks later the unmistakable sounds of a carnival began floating to him across the darkness and city sounds. Slowly and subtly, however, another sound crept up on his awareness. A scraping, sliding, slithering, a clicking and hissing. Not sounds that made him feel warm and fuzzy inside, in other words. Sounds that frightened him, that made his short and curlies shrivel, as the old woman had put it. He stopped, turned around in a circle, hunting for the origin of the sounds. He found it, a shadow within a shadow. He stared hard at it, like waking up from a dream and seeing leftover dream shapes in a corner of his room. Except he had no room anymore, and this was not leftover dream-shapes. His vision seemed to waver and his eyes burned momentarily, then he could make out the shape clearly, and wished he couldn't. It was low, long, six-legged, its mouth was a vertical slash in its face filled with jagged teeth, and it had reptilian eyes on either side of its head. The most bizarre and scary part of the creature in the shadows was the tail, or rather tails, plural. There were four of them, for one thing. Or maybe it was one tail split into four parts, it was hard to tell. Either way, there were four long, writhing, spike-tipped scorpion tails, each moving in its own serpentine pattern, each focused on him. It scuttled toward him in a movement like a cockroach vanishing under a refrigerator, tails whipping at him, teeth gnashing. Jax threw himself backward, panic and terror surging up into his throat like a trapped scream. Like with his father, barely two hours ago, something within him burst open; this time, however, he felt his entire being shake and shiver, felt himself curling in on himself, felt a tugging and draining within himself; something shifted, something primal and elemental in his core altered. He felt less afraid, suddenly. Everything was different, his smell, his sight, his tactile sensation, all seemed heightened and...alien. He took a step forward and his vision blurred as he shot forward a dozen feet in an instant. He looked sideways and saw three sets of legs, and he knew, somehow, what had happened. He had become that creature in front of him. He had the tails, and he understood them now, they were odd and powerful appendages, at once antennae and weapons. He wove them in a web pattern, sensing the world around him in a visual kind of smell, a comprehension of the world around him in a four-dimensional way that left Jax's human mind stunned and in awe. The creature facing him froze in confusion. It wasn't a brute beast, Jax understood. It was a cunning, intelligent, nearly-sentient being, and it was suddenly faced with a situation that it didn't understand at all. It had had prey before it, a delicious, ripe, soft thing to devour and suck dry, and now it had...itself. It was all too much for it, and the thing whirled around, stiffened its tail/antennae, flexed some internal muscle that Jax could only sense through his unfamiliar alien mind, and vanished. It had ripped a small hole in the fabric of the air, or of reality, or of time itself—Jax wasn't sure what—and darted through it, letting the seam close and seal behind it.

He couldn't change back. He hadn't turned into this weird, ugly, frightening thing on purpose, and now he couldn't figure out how to get back, and panic was beginning to boil in his head. The carnival, or Carnivale or whatever...that lady, Lucy, had said they could help him. He held an image of the flier in his head, of the circus-red background with the name, Carnivale Mechaniste, written in black dripping ink; he held the name in his head, as Lucy had said it. He oriented himself, heard the music and the ride sounds, calliope pipes skirling and people laughing and barkers calling, and he knew he was close. He followed the sounds, followed his instincts, or the instincts of the body he inhabited currently, holding to shadows and scrabbling up walls and back down like a spider, rushing with blinding speed, leaping in impossible bounds from rooftop to rooftop, silent as a serpent in knee-high grass. Then he was there, in an empty lot between houses, a fairground of some sort, the kind of place that would be deserted, a bare patch of flattened crabgrass and broken bottles and cigarette butts that suddenly overnight became a fair or a carnival or a two-bit circus. There were tents and trailers and ramshackle constructions like third world slums, there were hot dogs roasting and cotton candy machines spinning, there were beer tents and a Ferris wheel and a carousel playing eerie calliope music, rides of all sorts spinning and whirling...then his vision wavered again and his mind seemed to adjust in some minute but vital way and now he was seeing something totally different, yet still the same. It made no sense at all to Jax even as he tried to process it. He was seeing, at once, an average low-budget traveling carnival, the kind of thing that comes in for a few days with rickety rides and sullen, scruffy ticket-takers and food that gave you the runs for days afterward; but yet he was seeing as well a true carnival from some bygone age, a place of fantastic attractions and freakshows and bawdy tents and excited crowds, a traveling celebration of the weird and fantastic. He saw strange machines pumping and hissing like steam-powered contraptions from the Industrial Revolution, but these had no readily-apparent function. Woven all throughout these observations from a rooftop Jax felt...power....magic, if he dared call it that. It was palpable and undeniable, and some part of him hungered for it.

He scritched down the brick wall scuttled to the ten-foot high chainlink fence that forced visitors to the ticket booth, scaled it and leaped from the top into a shadow behind a low tent. There were people passing just on the other side of the tent, so Jax edged around the corner to peer out at them. His antennae-stingers stretched out towards the people, absorbed the air and the myriad sensations coming at him. Some of the people passing by him seemed to glow gently, a greenish-golden luminescence, and it was these that glowed that made that alien, bestial part of him salivate, tense his muscles like a tiger in the brake. He found himself actually doing exactly that, crouching and about to spring forward with all his strength at a particularly bright-glowing young girl. Maybe she sensed him, maybe he made a sound, but she stopped and whirled to face him, shouting: “Thresher!” Her voice seemed unnaturally loud, echoing in a way that was certainly magic, if Jax had any way to judge such things. Thresher? What was a thresher? He turned to look behind him, then realized that she was talking about him. Before he could react, a dozen men were facing him, pointing long, thin, bent silver tubes at him like weapons. He tried to tell them that he wasn't a thresher, but the only sound that emerged was a gurgling growl, and that just made them retreat a step, cursing and brandishing their tubes.

“STOP!” The voice that called out the order was a deep, rich, commanding baritone. Its owner came into view, a massive man with thick, wavy black hair that was oiled and carefully combed, long mustaches that drooped past his chin. He was dressed in quintessential gypsy clothes, loose-fitting bright red pants, a yellow sash wrapped twice around his waist, an orange vest and knee-high black boots polished to a shine. He had a sword thrust through his sash on the left side, hilt tilted for a cross-body draw. His powerfully muscled arms were covered in green ink tattoos, and his broad, hard face had a scar running down one side, pulling his right eye down. The man approached him fearlessly, his sword in its scabbard and his hands swinging loosely at his sides.

“This thing is not a Thresher,” the gypsy said in a deep, thickly-accented voice. “I do not explain it easy, but is not a Thresher, this I am knowing.”

“What are you talking about, Harman?” The man who asked the question was tall and thin with greasy hair and a furtive look about him. “Of course it's a Thresher. You can see that plain enough. It oughta be killed, right now.” He stepped forward and raised his tube, but the gypsy, whose name seemed to be Harman, stopped him.

“Is not a Thresher, I tell you. I am seeing past the skin of appearances to the truth beneath. Do nothing, any of you.” Harman stepped closer, reached out a hand, whispered under his breath. His hand glowed with what Jax knew now to be magic, and it made him growl in hunger. Harman didn't seem to even notice. He continued to whisper, and Jax felt something in his chest being pulled out of him, expanding and burgeoning and overtaking him and running all throughout him. He felt himself unfolding and twisting, felt his brain and senses returning to normal, felt his thoughts slam back into his head with abrupt clarity. He was himself again, all at once, and he was on his knees, vomiting, weeping, coughing and retching, shaking and cursing.

“See? I tell you. Now, you all go. Miss Thyra, you must go fetch your father to my stall, tell him we have a newcomer, newly opened.” Harman unwrapped his sash from his waist and wound it around Jax's, prompting the realization that he was naked. “Can you stand, boy? Try to stand. There you go ,is okay now.” Jax tried to walk, stumbled and fell to his knees and was caught by Harman. The gypsy scooped Jax up under an arm and carried him as easily as a rag doll. The jouncing and jostling prompted another wave of nausea and vomiting, followed quickly by unconsciousness.

He woke up surrounded by the smell of incense and leather and hot metal, with an image of the girl he'd seen inscribed in his mind, her platinum-blond hair and pale skin, nubile body, her fearless blue eyes. His head throbbed and every nerve ending seemed to be on fire. “Don't try to move, boy,” came Harman's voice. “To use magic at the beginning is very difficult. Shifting of shapes is even more sick-making.” Jax nodded, kept his eyes closed.

“Thank you,” he said. His voice was hoarse and sore. “I...I don't know how it happened. One second I was me, the next there was this...thing..in front of me, and suddenly everything was weird and I felt different.” Jax opened his eyes, finally. The walls were brightly-colored fabric in every color imaginable, pieced together in an eye-bending patchwork. At one end, Jax could see the accoutrements of a smithy, bellows, forge, anvil, hammers and tongs and bits of metal and various items in different stages of completion. Between the bed where Jax lay and the smithy was an area that seemed to be part alchemist's chamber and part mechanic's workbench. There were modern tools like wrenches and vises and screwdrivers, there were things Jax had only seen in old history text books, and other things that he simply couldn't make heads or tails of, intricate Rube Goldberg-type contraptions that seemed to run on steam. The room where Jax lay was the living quarters in between smithy and...whatever that other place was. The whole seemed to be contained in a retro-fitted, jury-rigged RV, for Jax saw a modern kitchenette in one corner, and a table and a small flat-screen TV.

“Is very unusual, I must say.” Harman was sitting at the table, a steaming mug in his hand. “Most shapeshifters, they cannot change into magical creatures, only natural animals and people. You never knew of yourself?”

“Never knew of myself?” It took Jax a few moments to understand what Harman was asking. “Did I grow up knowing I was some sort of wizard? No. It just sort of happened.”

Harman laughed, a slow rumble. “Wizard, he says. Heh. You have no ideas of what you are saying. Wizards are from storybooks. Was that Thresher a storybook unicorn? Is the magic of shifting shapes fun and adventuresome? No, is not. You are knowing nothing.” His words were harsh and sarcastic, but seemed to come from a place of kindness. “What is your name, boy?”

“ Jax...Jackson Magnus.”

“I am Harman Luca. I am the weapons master and mage-smith of the Carnivale Mechaniste.”

“I don't know what that means, but okay. Sounds bad-ass, at any rate. Are you a—”

“If you say 'gypsy', Jackson Magnus,” Harman interrupted, “I will throw you back to the Threshers. I am Romani. 'Gypsy' is a term of insult.”

“Romani. Got it. But Romani is the real name for what people call gypsies?”

“Yes, you have the truth of it. And you...you are not a normal American teenager.”

“I'm not?” This would have been news about three hours ago, but now...not so much.

“Normal American teenagers cannot transform into Threshers.”

“I guess not. What are Threshers anyway?” Jax slowly sat up, felt nausea ripple through him and slowly fade. He stood up, a little unsteady on his feet, made his way to the table and sat down. Harman pushed a mug at him. Jax took a sip, tasted thick black coffee and the tang of whiskey.

“Is this spiked?” He asked.

“A little whiskey is in it, yes. It will help, I promise you.”

“I'm only fifteen, you know that, right? Not that I'm complaining.”

“I know the rules of this country, but I give it to you for medicinal purposes. And besides, we are not residents of this place. Their rules do not apply to us. Not really.” Harman pointed to a pile of clothes on a counter. “You should put on those. You do not want to go around wearing only my sash.” Jax looked down, aware suddenly that he was still naked except for the sash. Underneath the pile of clothes was Jax's iPod. “Someone went back to the alley where you first shifted and found your music device underneath a dumpster. Your clothes were gone, but this remained, hidden as it was.”

Jax didn't care about the clothes he had lost, so much, but he was grateful to have his iPod. Music was his comfort, the one familiar and stable thing in his life, even before all this had happened. The clothes Harman had provided were a little big on him, and they were Romani style clothes, but they were comfortable, and all he had. The pants, blue like the ocean seen from afar, were baggy and cut above the ankle. The sash was saffron in color, long enough to wrap three times around his waist and still hang to his knee on one side. A leaf-green vest and a pair of knee-high, supple leather boots completed the outfit.

“Are these your clothes?” Jax asked as he stuffed his bare feet into the boots, which were lined with silk, making socks unnecessary.

“No, they belonged to my brother, who was much younger and much smaller than I. He is dead now.”

“I...I'm sorry...” Jax wasn't sure what to say.

“Is okay. He died a long time ago, in a far away land.” Harman's averted eyes belied his easy dismissal. Jax sensed that questions were unwelcome.

“Well...thanks, again, for saving me and helping me. I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to turn back into myself.”

“You are welcome, Jackson. Ah. Here is Aric. He will help you learn to control what lies within you.” Boots clopped on a metal step and the fabric wall parted, admitting a man of average height and build with attractive Nordic features, fine blond hair swept back into a braid that hung down between his shoulder blades. His eyes were a clear, bright blue, penetrating and piercing, fixing Jax with a cold, hard stare that made some part of him shiver.

“I'm Aric Larsen,” he said in a crisp, unaccented voice, sliding next to Jax in the booth. “I'm the carnival master. That was quite an entrance you made, I must say.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. I'm sorry if I made any trouble for you. Things just kind of happened really fast, you know?”

“Yes, I do believe I understand. You are newly-opened, I am told?”

“Well, I guess so. I mean, I'm not really sure what that means.”

“It means your magical heritage made itself known for the first time. You were raised by normals?”

“Well, I thought so. But when everything happened, they both didn't seem surprised. And my dad—” Jax broke off when the memory of his dad's words slammed through him. When they put you with us, he'd said. You don't fit, he'd said. Put you with us? What did that mean? Jax tried to puzzle out what that meant, failed. He wasn't ready to understand it. There were other more pressing matters at hand. “Magical heritage?” He asked instead, changing the subject.

“People like you, the things you can do, they aren't little accidents of nature. You aren't a freak. You come from a strong lineage, I'm guessing. You have powerful potential. I can help you realize that potential, if you trust me and you listen to me.” Aric stood up to leave. “But that's for another day. For now, just get the feel of the place, figure things out.” With that, Aric left. Jax saw, out of the corner of his eye, Harman giving Aric a dark, angry glare as the carnival master left. There was bad blood there, Jax decided. Something to keep in mind.

* * *

Carnivale Mechaniste was a fascinating place, and Jax found himself fitting in perfectly—much to his surprise and for once in his life. His magical abilities, whatever they were, stayed silent and almost forgotten. Almost. It was impossible to forget them completely, as the Carnivale was a thing steeped in magic, tangible, material, oozing from fabric, shimmering in eyes, gleaming from skin. It was in everything, the food, the weapons, the performances, and especially the technology. Very little, if any, of the machinery and equipment that Jax encountered was normal, familiar, 21^st century technology. It was amalgamations of old and new and foreign, normal and magical. The one thing that he was able to quickly discern about the machinery, in those first few days, was that it all ran on magic in some way, although where the magic came from, how the technology worked with the magic as a power source, he was unable to figure out. He also couldn't figure out what it all did, which was the weirder part. All these machines humming and whirring and clanking and groaning, all day and all night, without any obvious result. They had microwaves and refrigerators and engines, cell phones and TVs and flashlights, but even these things were altered in some way, running unplugged.

There was always, night and day, a feeling of power, of magic in the air around him. Jax felt his own body humming and vibrating, like a generator coming to life. There was a synchronicity, he discovered, in the magic around him. When a generator, as he called the ineffable machines around him, hummed, they all did so in perfect unison from one end of the carnival to together, and the tidal rumbling of magic within him began to subtly match the rhythm.

The people who ran the Carnivale were a rough, interesting, complicated lot, all of them castoffs in some way, all of them with their own hard-luck stories, and they all radiated magic. He spent the first several days just getting to know the people around him. Gretto, a short, stocky, friendly man with blue hair and multiple piercings, seemed normal enough until Jax took a trip into his house of mirrors.

“Watch'er, Jax, m'boy.” Gretto was a fast talker, a smooth, syrup-voiced salesman. “This ain't no normal house of mirrors, this ain't. Ain't nothin' normal about this Carnivale, I oughta warn you, if you ain't figured that out for yourself. Y'ain't gonna get hurt as long as you stay on the path. I'll be watchin' o'course, just t'make sure nothin'...untoward happens.” Gretto slapped Jax on the back hard enough to take his breath away, and shoved him through the tent flaps. The tent, from the outside, seemed to be a normal circus-attraction tent, not overly-large, but once he stumbled through the entrance, everything changed. He found himself on stone footpath that meandered through a wide field of multicolored wildflowers, a sea of blue and red and orange and gold and yellow and pink, and other colors Jax didn't have names for, all nodding and bowing in some unseen wind; at the edges of the meadow, which Jax could just see, the rules of physics were further broken. There seemed to be a galaxy floating beyond the edges of the wildflower field. There were life-sized stars hovering and spinning, planets hanging god-sized and floating serene and mammoth in complex orbits. The path led him over a hill; when he reached the apex, the path flowed down and underneath in an eye-bending M.C. Escher-like curve. Jax kept walking, turned to look over his shoulder and saw only meadow and path and planets and stars and nebula, but no tent, no exit, no sly grinning Gretto with his blue hair that Jax suspected wasn't dyed. He kept walking, kept walking, followed the path through the mid-space meadow that made him feel as if he were in a Mario Galaxy game. He rounded another curve and things shifted again, now he was trudging on the bottom of the ocean, but this ocean-floor was a well-lit place, airy and mystical, full of wild shapes and silken shadows gliding in the hazy distance and bobbing seaweed and rippled sand beneath his feet. Gravity was awkward here, he was a heavy, unwieldy intruder here, clunky and lumbering, shuffling and drifting in slow bounds over hills and around rocks and beneath mountains, he was traversing here for hours, he saw shipwrecks with casks of spilled gold and gems and barnacle-crusted skulls; he wondered how time passed, here, under the sea within a carnival tent somewhere in Detroit. Then his heart began to pound, inexplicably and suddenly. He felt a prickling on the back of his neck, turned, and threw himself backward to the ground, scrabbling backward on his backside away from the nightmare that rushed toward him on too many legs, a thing with too many eyes and too many teeth. It was like a spider, a giant, mutant creature with at least eight legs around a small, oval body, long, many-jointed legs that dug into the sand with curved talons on the end. Its serpent-scaled body was long and thin, and unlike a spider it had a neck and a head, a long, sinuous neck and an avian head that was stretched toward him with an open, toothed mouth.

Jax felt a sensation run through him, a tightening, a falling inward and a subtle shifting of his mental balance. No, he thought, not again. Not this. He fought it. He steeled his core, tensed every muscle, focused every thought and fiber on his mental image of himself, of his teenager's body with sprouts of hair and his sharp-featured face, his straight, white teeth, his aquiline nose and black, spiked hair and green eyes. He felt the feelings fade, felt the creature in front of him watching, knew somehow inside himself that it understood his internal battle.

EAT? He heard a slow, jittery, alien voice in his mind. POKE AND SLURP AND TASTE? MAGICS? The thing in front of him lifted a leg and pointed it at him, took careful, non-threatening steps toward him. It stretched its foreleg to him, a motion that asked permission, somehow, while promising gentility. Jax held himself motionless, his head tipped up to watch the approach of the being in front of him. He couldn't think of it as a monster. Its claw touched his forehead, a whisper-soft brush, feather-light, and the world went black, and he was funneling upward and through microscopic holes in the universe, traveling with a silvery ghost that held his hand softly, a lovely floating wisp that Jax knew was the same as the spider-thing. It was showing him something, he realized. Communicating. He didn't know what it wanted, but he went along with it. It felt like hyperspace looked in Star Wars Episode VI, a twisting, multicolor tunnel of streaming universe-matter, it was cold and endless, and then without warning it was over and Jax was standing back on the ocean floor facing the spider-thing.

NOT EAT, it said. MAGICS UNGROWN. GO FLY AWAY, LARVA. And then it was gone, it turned around, lifted a claw and rent a hole in reality, as the Thresher had done. He saw it give him a last glance with its swan-neck one last time as the hole healed itself.

“That was somethin', boy, that was. Never seen nothin' as that, not never. You got somethin' interestin' in you, boy, you do. Revenants, they don't let their prey go like that, not never. You see one, you're dead. Jax boy...what are you?” Gretto was talking a mile a minute, pulling him from the house of mirrors and propping him up with an arm around his waist, which made him realize that he was limp and weak, suddenly, exhausted. “Drink this, boy, it'll do you good. That weren't no normal trip, I tell ya. That was deep magic.” He thrust a flask into Jax's hands, something that tasted like fire and cleared some of the buzz and haze in Jax's head, caused him to cough and splutter, and take another swig.

“What the hell is that?” He asked, when he could breathe again. “It hurt, and it was amazing.”

“Oh that's a little concoction we make where I come from. Its called necroot. You can't drink too much, it's mighty potent.”

“Where do you—”

“You don't ask that, son,” the smile was gone from Gretto's genial face. “That's a question you just don't ask in the Carnivale. People hereabouts are might sensitive about their time and place of origin. To that is rude, and dangerous. I'll warn you, for free, 'cause you're young, and new. Just don't ask that. There're other things, but that's the biggie, that is.” He tipped the flask up with a finger, pouring more necroot down Jax's throat.

“Now. Tell me, what was it like when that Revenant touched you?” Gretto was back to his bright-voiced self.

“God, I don't know if I can. It was weird, and that is saying something, considering what's happened the last couple days. It was...like being in hyperspace, a little, lots of twisting, flowing colors, and it was cold. The...Revenant, you called it? The Revenant was different, too, it was a like the a pool of mercury, but alive and thinking. It's not an evil thing, I don't think, just different. It talked to me, in my head. I...I almost turned into it, actually. I didn't want to, because the last time I did that—which was the first and only time so far—I couldn't turn back and almost got killed. This time I managed to not change, which I guess means I'm learning how to control this...whatever.”

“ 'This whatever?' ” Gretto laughed uproariously. “Boy, you're gonna have to learn how to talk if you're gonna fit in. First of all...” Gretto took the flask and swigged from it, “You are a shapeshifter. A shapechanger, some call it. You can become whatever you see that is alive and aware, animals and people...and magical beings as well, apparently. That's rare, from what I understand. Shapeshifters are rare, they are, and powerful ones without a bunch of limitations and such like, they're even rarer. You're one of those kinds, would be my guess. Aric's the one to tell you about all that stuff, though, as he's the real powerhouse, hereabouts. Most of us as work the Carnivale, we're specialists, you see. Me? I'm a visualist. My magic works as optical and sensory illusions, so when I send you through the 'house of mirrors' all I'm really doing is sending you into a locus of illusory spells. There ain't no mirrors in there a'tall, just an empty tent, for them as can perceive magic, you understand. You walk into the tent and into my spell and through the other side, that's it. To them as are normal, no magic, they see a house of mirrors right and true, but that's Aric's work, not mine.

“Well, boy,” Gretto gave Jax one last pull on the flask, took it back, made it vanish into a pocket, ushered the now-tipsy Jax away from his tent, “it's been right informative, it has. I got some customers a-comin', so I'm gonna have to catch up to you later on.”

Jax wove unsteadily through the Carnivale, watching the customers enter the attractions, exit pleased and baffled and eager. He followed the crowd, followed the pull of magic wherever it led, followed the music and the heady buzz of the necroot until he found himself standing outside of what seemed to be a teepee of sorts, but on a grand scale, dozens of feet in diameter and at least twenty feet high, constructed from thick smooth poles and blood-red fabric woven at the seams and edges with gold thread. From within came a low pulsing drum beat, a hypnotic rhythm that made Jax's head feel lighter, made his body seem to float and roll and try to escape heavenward. Incense wafted to his nose from the opening at the top, a smell of cedar and lavender and hashish. Jax found himself trying to part the opening of the teepee when a small, delicate white hand descended from behind him, took his and turned him around.

“You don't want to go in there, Jackson Magnus,” it was the girl he'd first seen when he was a Thresher. Thrya, Harman had called her. “Just please trust me, you don't want to.”

“But I think I do,” Jax heard himself say in a thick and slurred voice. “It's pulling me in, Miss Thyra.”

“You're drunk,” she said, a note of derision in her voice. She leaned forward and sniffed at him. “Ah, necroot. You've been with Gretto. Well that explains it. Necroot is dangerous stuff. It creeps up on you. One sip had me loopy for hours. How much did you have?”

Jax tried to remember how many times he'd sipped from the flask. He tried to count on his fingers, but found them multiplying when he tried to focus on them. “Three?”

“Three what? Dear god, Jax. You are positively wasted, aren't you?” She sighed, put her arm through his and led him away gently but insistently. As they got farther away from the red tent, the feeling of hypnotic pulling desire faded.

“What's in that tent?” He asked.

Thyra blushed, ducked her head. “It's...we call it the Bawdy Tent.”

“So it's like a strip joint?”

“Sort of. It's complicated. Don't worry about it.” Even in his current state, he could tell that Thyra was obviously uncomfortable talking about it.

“Where're we going?”

“You need food. We're going to the grub hut.”

“Grub hut?”

“Yeah, that's what they call it. It's where the carnies eat. I hate the name, but it just kind of stuck, I guess.”

“ 'M I a carnie, now?” Jax found that funny, for some reason.

“I guess so. You've got to find a job to do, though. Daddy doesn't let anyone in for free. Pull your weight or go your own way, he says. What can you do?”

“I dunno. Guess I'm a shapeshifter, or something. I'll find something to do. Don't got nowhere else to go.”

“That's the case with most everyone here, so you're in good company.”

The grub hut was a massive awning, a tent without walls, filled from edge to edge with folding picnic tables. Along one wall was an assembly-line buffet, like a high school cafeteria. The food, Jax discovered, was uniformly exotic. There was shawarma and hummus and tabbouleh, pasta puttanesca and alfredo, wood-fired pizza, a dozen different types of Asian food, American burgers and fries, as well as a myriad of foods Jax didn't recognize. The smell of the food made him realize how hungry he was. Thyra pushed him down onto a bench and told him to wait. She returned in moments with a comfortingly-familiar Styrofoam plate piled with a thick cheeseburger and fries and sweating can of Coke.

“I figured you'd want something you know, to start with. Some of that weirder food from the other realms can be tough to get used to.” Other realms? Jax wasn't ready to ask what that meant. He devoured the food, finding his head clearing as he ate. By the time he'd finished his second burger Jax felt relatively sober, although he still had that jangling, buzzing feeling in his head that came with getting drunk midday, a feeling with which he'd become all too acquainted, skipping school with Danny.

He felt a hand pinch his shoulder painfully, craned his neck to see Aric standing above him. “Better watch out for the necroot of Gretto's. He's mighty fond of it, and if you're around him for more than five minutes, he's got you swilling it too, and then all of a sudden you're hammered and it's barely noon.”

“So it's happened to you?” Now that he was sober, Jax felt embarrassment creeping up on him.

“Oh, more than once. It's happened to everyone, so if you were feeling bad about it, don't. No one will think any less of you around here for getting a bit of a drunk on, especially if Gretto's involved. Now that you've sobered up a bit, thanks to my daughter, I'd say you and I have some business to attend to.” Aric put a hand to Jax's head, muttered something, and Jax felt the rest of his residual hangover slither away. “Thyra, I believe Joffrey would like your help with the livestock, if you would be so kind. Jax, follow me.” Aric strode off without looking back, the attitude of a man used to authority, and used be obeyed without question. Jax cast a last glance back at Thyra, then trotted after Aric.

Carnivale Mechaniste

Chapter 1: Adrift

They're at it again, Jax thought. Another fight. Jax touched the screen of iPod, cranking the volume up until the sound of blaring, thrashing metal drowned out his mom and dad fighting. He knew what it would lead to, and he couldn't stand to hear it. Sure enough, even with Amon Amarth as loud as he could stand it, he heard the smack, the shriek, the slammed door. Pulling an earbud out of his ear, Jax listened carefully. His mother sniffled, rummaged in the bathroom, putting makeup over her eye as if Jax was clueless as to what happened in the kitchen every night. As if he'd never seen the drops of blood on the cracked, dirty linoleum, in the corner where his mom had missed it cleaning up afterwards. He swore under his breath, put the earbud back in as his mom started dinner. Back to Nightjohn. He hated that stupid book, but it was better than listening to that.

His mom came in quietly, as she always did, silent as a cat. He never heard her walking, even on the creaky old wooden floors. It was like she floated or something. Her small hand on his shoulder was warm, trembled slightly still.

“Come eat, Jackson.” Her voice was low, musical.

“Not hungry.”

“Please?”

“I have to read this. We have a quiz tomorrow.” He hated that she needed him. She was his mother. But this happened every night, just about. She seemed to need him to eat with her, for some reason he couldn't quite figure out. Something about normality, he figured.

“You can read after. Just come eat with me.”

“Fine.” He couldn't refuse, he knew it. He just wished she would stand up to him more, or something. The one time he'd tried getting in the middle of them, it hadn't gone well. His dad had leveled a look at him that was unmistakable. “Don't, boy,” was all he'd said, in his deep, smoke-scarred growl. Since then, Jax had felt something, deep inside, that was afraid and ashamed. He got mad at his mom for not standing up to him, but Jax knew he was really mad at himself. He'd spent a lot of time thinking about this. He should've stood, taken it, fought back, protected her. But he hadn't. He'd run to his room, put in his earbuds and cranked it up, painfully loud. With a sigh, he turned off the iPod and dropped the book.

Dinner was decent, at least. They got through dinner, which was awkward and difficult. Mom was pretending nothing had happened, and Jax was trying to think of something to say that wouldn't make problems. Trouble started when he came through the door, unsteady and angry. Not again, thought Jax. There was no getting out of this one. He was coming, pointing his finger and slurring, “Havin' dinner withou' me, huh? To good t'wait f'r me? Huh?” He half-fell into a chair and waved vaguely at the table. “Where's mine?”

Jax's mom got up hurriedly, spooned some leftovers from the pan onto a plate and microwaved it. Jax, meanwhile, was sitting paralyzed at the table, staring at his dad, trying to will himself invisible, hoping his dad would just eat and leave Jax alone. When his dad started to talk to him, some slurred nonsense that Jax couldn't make out, he felt his head start to throb, a steady, intense ache at his temples. Whenever he felt especially stressed, he would get these unbearable headaches, migraines almost, that left him dizzy and sick to his stomach. This headache was the worst he'd ever had.

Jax's mom set the plate and a glass of iced tea in front of his dad and sat down.

“Iced tea?” Crap. This is how it starts. “I don' want iced tea. Why would I wan' iced tea? Gimme a beer, if you know what's good for you.” He took a bite, dropped the fork when he burned his lips on the over-heated food. And that was all it took. A swipe of his hand sent the plate flying at Jax's mother, a second sent the glass smashing against the wall. Jax's mother started stammering out an apology, but he wasn't listening. He took a step towards her, stood over her cowering form, fist raised.

Jax shot to his feet, headache gone or forgotten, standing up so fast the chair crashed to floor. His dad cast a glance at Jax.

“No!” Jax shouted. “You won't! No more! Leave her alone!” His dad took a lumbering step away from Jax's mother, towards him. Panic started to boil up in his throat, a hard knot forming in his stomach, a feeling that he'd taken a step over an edge that he couldn't take back. A second stumbled step, creaking heavily on the wooden slats of the floor. Jax couldn't move from the spot, even if he wanted to. He wouldn't run away again. Not again. A third stomped footstep and his dad was there in front of him, sour beer breath and unfocused eyes and hard, raised fist only inches away. Time seemed to slow down for Jax. His mother was watching wide-eyed and fearful, shaking her head, mouthing no no no. Jax's dad was weaving back and forth, his clenched fist was starting its downward arc towards Jax like a falling rock.

Then something seemed to break open inside Jax, like the top of a shaken soda bottle exploding off and upwards and away. Everything stopped. His mother was frozen in place on her chair, her black hair curling in tendrils, sweeping across her face as she turned her face away from the imminent impact. His dad was leaning slightly away from Jax, trying to keep his balance even as he threw his fist at his son. His face was lined, weathered and scarred, Jax noticed for the first time. In the frozen space between seconds Jax realized his parents weren't as old as he'd always assumed. They probably weren't even older than Mr. Schuman, his geometry teacher. His dad, especially, just looked...so rough, so hard. The lines on his face were deeply etched like gouges in a wooden table, and there were dozens of scars, thin white lines all over his face.

The reality, or unreality, rather, of what was happening struck Jax, forcefully. Everything was stopped, just completely frozen. Jax could see specks of dust floating motionless in the air, a bead of sweat clinging to his dad's chin, about to fall, but not. Jax found himself unable to move, found the fear still crouching inside his chest, found himself angry all of a sudden, really truly angry now, not just pissed off and sullen like usual, but burning with rage at the whole stupid situation that was almost frightening in its intensity. His dad, who never seemed to do or say anything kind, or gentle, who didn't love him, or his mom, it seemed. His mom, who stood by and took the hurt, never saying anything, never stopping it. Jax would go with her, if she left his dad. In a heartbeat, he'd leave. He was so angry. He had to do something. Something. Anything.

He lifted his hand, palm outwards, like a martial artist doing a palm-strike, his hand lifting all on its own. Jax felt the anger and resentment building and coiling in his chest and his head and his arms like a snake about to strike, and then all the pressure from everything just burst out and Jax felt it explode through him, through his up-raised hand.

Time returned with a deafening roar, a sound like a hundred jet engine turbines at full blast layered over the guttural growl of lions and a high-pitched whine like feedback from a speaker. Time returned, and Jax's father flew backwards through the dining room like a thrown doll, crashed into the wall of the living room, not just into it, but through it into the yard beyond. He struck the grass hard enough to dig up a furrow of dirt where he hit, rolled into the street in front of an oncoming car. The vehicle screeched to a stop, swerved and fishtailed, honked its horn furiously, but kept on going. They lived in that kind of neighborhood, where no one interfered in anyone else's household...issues. Jax stared, amazed and horrified. He found his feet taking steps, moving towards the gaping hole in the wall, which he stepped through. He knelt over his dad, in the street. He was breathing, but bloodied and unconscious. Or Jax thought he was, until a hand shot out and grasped Jax around the throat, lifted him up into the air slowly as his father rose to his full height, blood streaming down his face in red ribbons.

“So you opened it up, huh, kid? You found it?” His words made no sense to Jax, but they were sober and steady, forceful and lucid. Jax gasped and gurgled, kicked and thrashed. “I knew you would someday. It was only a matter of time. You didn't belong here, I told them that when they put you with us. You just don't fit. Not with us. Not with me, and certainly not with her.” He set Jax down to his feet and loosened his grip enough so that Jax could breathe, but didn't let go, still gripping hard enough to make Jax squirm and scratch at the hand that held him. His dad thrust a hand into the pocket of his stained jeans, pulled out a wad of cash, stuffed it into Jax's pocket. Completely baffled now, Jax just stared at his dad. “You don't know me, you don't know her, and you really don't know yourself. Get out of here. I have no idea where you'll end up, and I don't care. But I can promise you that you'll find what you're looking for, and who you are, even if you don't know you're looking, or what you're looking for. Wipe that stupid confused look off your face. I know this doesn't make any sense. Look at what you just did. Does that make any sense? Has anything ever really made any sense to you? Gah...I'm still drunk...look, kid, this is simple. Confusing, and complicated, but essentially simple. What just happened means you came of age. And that means, in the heritage that you come from, that you're not gonna fit in the normal, above-everything world. You're going down below it, now, into something...else. Because you are something else. Just go, kid. You'll end up where you gotta be, when you gotta be there, and someone will show up to help everything make sense. This is the only thing I got to give you. Now go.” A necklace, a heavy thick silver chain with a strange rune-shape pendant was laid on Jax's neck. And with that Jax's dad released his grip and went back towards the house, stumbling slightly still, but steady. His mother was standing in the hole in the wall, staring sadly at Jax, but making no move to do anything. Typical. She raised her hand in farewell, and Jax could've sworn he saw her hand glow a little, like a trick of the light or something, but he knew, kind of, that it wasn't a trick, that something was happening. He felt a lightening in his stomach, an easing of the fear and uncertainty that laid there like a load of bricks, a brush of comfort, a sense that everything would work out. His mother kissed her fingertips and blew on them, and Jax felt a warmth infuse him. He took one shaky step down the street, a single footstep on the cracked blacktop, and it felt like he'd taken a step that would change him forever, a step over a line that he couldn't take back. He took a second step towards the pool of light shed by a streetlamp, the sickly orange glow that cast long, loping shadows that chased you, passed you and ran ahead of you as you passed. A dozen steps brought him into the center of the pool of light and Jax looked back at his house, but the hole was gone, the lights were off, except the bathroom light, where Jax could envision his mother brushing her teeth in her thigh-length Florida Keys T-shirt, leaning over the square porcelain white sink, rusted faucet running, the pitted mirror of the medicine cabinet reflecting her tired, delicate, features and sad eyes.

The one last glance ended up being a long lingering moment of temptation to turn back and go in, climb into his bed under the thin cold sheets and watch the shadows move until sleep dragged him down. You're something else, kid, Jax heard again in his head. He took another step, and felt a thread snap inside him, a severing of the hold that the house had on him. It was a strange feeling. It was like that first rush of breath after his father let go of his throat, a relief, exhilarating and wonderful. It was also scary, being cut loose from the only home he'd ever known, all of a sudden, no warning, nothing at all. It was Wednesday, an ordinary day, but here he was, walking away from his parents, his life, and he'd just experienced the strangest sequence of events of his entire life. Time had stopped, actually stopped. He'd done...something...to his father. Something violent and terrifying...and exciting too, in a way that felt...almost wrong. Like the feeling of cutting 6^th hour algebra with Danny to get slushies and sneak cigarettes in the cemetery. Fun, but more exciting for the rush of knowing you might get caught. Jax had done something powerful to his big, tough, hardened, alcoholic father...and gotten away with it, sort of.

But now what? Where should he go? No answer presented itself immediately, so he did the only thing he could think of: he turned on his iPod--which he had had in his pocket the entire time-and started walking, trying to put on a tough face, trying to just not think and hope something would happen.

Up until now, Jax had had some vague notion of how life would be: a continuation of the endless process of getting through school, avoiding his parents' fights, and eventually figure out what he wanted to do with himself. Just get through it, one day after another. Get grades good enough to pass through, avoid the bullies and popular kids, and don't get too knocked around by his dad. He spent most days alone, sometimes playing C.O.D. at Danny's, mostly just trying to stay invisible and unnoticed. Now, all that was thrown up in the air. Even his ideas of who he was, and who he would be, was all messed up. The future seemed even more inscrutable than it had before. If he was just sort of vaguely muddling along before, now he was totally adrift and alone.

Before the Rooster Crows

It's a moment I'll never forget. How could I? It was the defining moment of my life, an instant imprinted indelibly on the fabric of my soul. If I close my eyes, even now a lifetime later, sitting with aching joints waiting for guards to come and carry me to my own cross, I can see it all unfold: torchlight flickers, the boot-steps of the soldiers echo as they tramp through Caiaphas' house...I follow Him at a distance, unwilling or unable to accept what is happening. He foretold it, I know, but seeing it happen...it's unreal. My heart is beating like a Roman galley drum, my throat is tight with fear, I am breathless; if they know I am one His followers, they might take me too, do to me what they are doing to Him...my flesh shivers at the thought of the scourge tips ripping my flesh. I cannot bear that thought, but neither can I leave Him. So I follow, hoping they don't ask too many questions.

It was only three years or so, but they changed me completely. I was a fisherman, simple, strong, and stubborn. I took my boat out in the early morning, when dawn's fingers were just brushing the horizon, threw my net and hauled it in, again and again until my muscles ached and burned, and when I couldn't take the strain anymore, I set my teeth and hauled harder, refused to stop or slow until evening lowered itself upon the sea and light faded. I had a family to provide for, and if I caught no fish, they didn't eat. I worked the nets, day in, day out, never considering anything else. What else was there? I had my family, a warm home, a trade I knew.

Then He came. He strode across the beach, sandals crunching in the sand. The net went slack in my hand, making my brother Andrew grunt in irritation. I didn't care. The man walking towards us on the beach...he was captivating, but I couldn't explain why. I straightened, lifted a hand to shade my eyes from the sun, watched Him approach. Andrew eventually stood up as well and took note of Him. The net dropped to the deck, and the only sound was the wind rippling the sail, fish tails slapping wet wood. He stopped, waves licking at his toes and the hem of his robe. He called out to us, a hand extended in invitation, “Come, follow me!” His voice was deep and rich, powerful and commanding and gentle. “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” The words were strange. We were fishermen, we fished for fish, not people. How could one catch men in a net? I glanced at Andrew, met his gaze for the briefest of moments. Andrew shrugged noncommittally. I looked back to Him, standing at the water's edge, waiting, as if He knew I would go with Him.

The water was cold and jarring in the hot air. I swam until my feet touched lake bottom, waded ashore, donned my robes. He watched me, His eyes a brown that was almost golden, like sunlight through amber, His eyes were the most incredible thing I've ever seen. His features were the ordinary, rough-hewn planes and angles of a Jew from the back-end of nowhere. His hands were calloused like a carpenter's, His hair and beard dark and tangled and thick. His robes were coarse, his sandals old and battered from years of wear. Oh, but His eyes. They were luminous, warm and kind. I stood before Him dripping wet and breathless from my swim, and He stared at me, into my soul, into my heart of hearts, my deepest, secret places, and He knew me intimately. I sensed something emanating from Him, a deep, thrumming, subtle power that seemed woven into His very presence...even now I cannot express in human words what it was like to meet His gaze. It is impossible, I think. Something ineffable stared out from His eyes, something beyond human ken; meeting His gaze is like staring up at the star-washed sky with the infinite millions of stars, like counting the grains of sand, like following the path of a wave across the trackless sea. Staring into His eyes is to stare full into the face of Yahweh. It is terrifying, and yet comforting. He saw the understanding dawning in me, smiled a kind and loving smile which sent a blaze of warmth and joy thrilling through me, drew me into an embrace. He might have whispered, “you are mine,” or I may have heard it in my mind...I cannot say for sure.

I stood in awe, rooted to the sand of the beach, Andrew next to me now, equally transfixed. I knew, then...this was the Messiah.

That began a three-year odyssey with Him, a lifetime of miracles and joy and pain and wonder packed into three short years. Every day spent with Him was to learn, was to be challenged, every time He looked at you, each slightest glance seared through you, laid bare your every thought and secret and fear and desire and worry; He knew your pride, knew your weakness, knew how to speak to you so gently and softly and powerfully that you would lay at His feet your very soul, could you but grasp it in two calloused hands.

Then, one day, all changed. We were sitting around a table, as we thirteen always did. It was Passover. We broke bread, shared wine, talked and laughed...but we all could feel a tension in the air. It exuded from the Iscariot, Judas. I always had a bad feeling about Judas. He was at the farthest end, near a window, morose and brooding, staring out at the olive trees in the distance, a hot breeze wafting in and fluttering his thick, curling, black hair and trimmed, oiled beard.

Then, words from Him that chilled us all to the bone: “This is my body, which is given for you,” holding aloft a loaf of bread, which He broke in two, with solemnity and ceremony. And then, after we had all eaten from the bread, He poured a draught of wine into our cups, and said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” We drank the wine, stealing glances at each other, asking, silently, what this all meant. He had spoken before of His death, and we tried to ignore it, tried to pretend that maybe He was wrong, just this once, just about this. Him, die? Please, Yahweh, do not let that day come. He has become a part of us, our Rabbi, our Lord, our friend, our brother, our father...

“But behold,” He said slowly, looking into each of our eyes, coming at last to linger upon Judas, “The hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table.” We knew, then, that it was real, and that one of us would betray Him to his death.

Later, when the food and wine was all exhausted and we sat on the slopes of the Mount of Olives singing hymns, He turned to me and pierced me with His eyes like luminous pools of shekinah glory and said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you, that he may sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” His words made my hands shake and turned my stomach into a pit of stone.

“Lord!” I protested. “I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” He had called me, made me anew. I knew then, in that moment, that I would, truly, go anywhere He went, suffer what He suffered. He was the prophesied Messiah...how could I do anything else?

But He looked at me, sadness in His eyes, and said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day until you deny three times that you know me.” I stared at Him in disbelief, a hollow in my gut, a tremble in my hands. Suddenly, after three years, all was falling apart. I? Deny Him? I vehemently affirmed my willingness to follow Him even unto death, and my words were echoed by the others. But the seed had been planted, and the doubt was there, in the deepest corner of myself. Would I, when the time came, be faithful? Little did I know then how soon would by words be tested.

We went to one of His favorite places to pray, the Garden of Gethsemane. The moon shone high and full, the night air was warm and still. As we walked, I could sense that His spirit was troubled, and I wished I could do something to comfort Him, who had done so much for so many. He left me, with James and John, those wild, thunder-voiced men, beneath a spreading tree and went off by Himself to pray. We three sat and waited, prayed, conversed...and fell asleep. James, John, and I had sat here waiting for Him a hundred times over the years, all night, sometimes. He could pray for hours without rising from His knees, He could pray from sunset to moonrise through to dawn, without ceasing or tiring. How could we know that this night would be any different. I awoke to His touch on my shoulder. “Simon? Are you asleep?” He asked, pouring guilt on me. I should have known, should have stayed awake, for Him. “Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And He went again to pray, leaving us to think on His words. How right He was. We struggled and prayed and fought sleep, but our eyes seemed weighted by anchors, slid inexorably downwards. We nodded off mid-prayer, nudged each other, stood and walked around, slapped our arms, but to no avail. He woke us again, and this time gave us a look which spoke louder than any words. We hung our heads in shame, and He returned to pray, a third time. As He departed, I noticed smears of blood on His brow, as if He had sweat drops of blood rather than salt. This time, we stayed awake mere moments before succumbing to sleep.

“Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?” He asked, anger in his voice this time. He sighed deeply, wiped his brow, turned and gazed into the distance, listening to some voice only He cold hear.

“It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going.” Even as He spoke the words, Judas crested the hill with a crowd wielding torches and swords and clubs. “See? My betrayer is at hand.” It is a blur, now, a haze of action. The one thing I remember, vividly, is Judas embracing Him, kissing His sweat-sheened cheek. The look He gave Judas was too complex for words, contained too many emotions to be counted or named; foremost, love, and forgiveness mingled in that reproachful, tender, piercing gaze so fraught with the divine glory that shone from his eyes, his very pores.

How dare he? A filthy sicarii, a traitor, a selfish coward, betrays the Messiah, the Promised One, with a kiss? That moment...I see it...Judas at the head of the blood-hungry mob, clean, soft hands gripping His shoulders, lips pale and trembling pressed to His left cheek, then His right, slow and exaggerated...Rabbi, the Messiah, He knew...He clutched Judas's arms for a moment and stared into his eyes, forgiving him, loving him, weeping for him, seeing his death. Judas kissed Him, and the mob went wild.

They seized Him. I saw red, then.

I drew my sword, hacked off the ear of someone in the crowd, sending a spray of blood into the air. Touching the wound with His fingertips, He healed the servant's ear. Words were exchanged, and they led Him away to the high priest. As they departed, I saw one of them toss a small sack to Judas, which clinked when he caught it. Judas saw me watching him. He must have seen the hatred in my stare, for the traitor put a hand to his sword, as if to be ready, should I attack him. I would have, I think, but for the lingering memory of His last words to me: “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” So Judas turned and slunk away like a frightened dog. I never saw him again, but I heard that they later found him, hung by his own hand from a withered olive tree, his robes soiled, his face tortured and twisted in death and remorse, swinging in the hot winds of Gehenna.

John and I followed them, at a distance. With every step I took, I felt my courage, my fierce determination of just a few hours ago draining away. They led Him, hands bound up painfully behind His back, to Annas, and then to Caiaphas, and it was he who questioned Him. John followed further than I dared, being known to the high priest. I might have gone with him, into the interior court where Caiaphas heard trials of the people, but my courage failed me, then. I stood outside the door, listening to the murmur of voices just beyond the iron-bound wood.

Then it came, that fateful moment. The door squealed open, revealing the pretty face of a servant girl. She motioned for me to enter into the court and led me to a charcoal fire, around which stood a handful of officers and high-placed servants. The girl glanced over at the dais, where He stood, hands still bound, surrounded by soldiers, then looked quizzically at me. “You are not one of this man's disciples, are you?” She asked me, gesturing at Yeshua. Panic swallowed me, overwhelmed me. I was surrounded by the very men seeking to kill Him, the men who had schemed and and plotted for His life...how do I answer? If I say that I am, will they not take me as well? Will they not beat me with their hard fists, kick me with their boots, whip me with their scourges? My flesh crawled, and the truth stuck in my throat.

“I am not.” I heard the words drop from my lips like stones. He turned His head, just then, and looked directly at me. Shame burned in me, but not with more heat than did fear. The crowd around the brazier was examining me now. One of them said, “this man is one of them,” gesturing at John and at Yeshua.

“No, I am not!” The flickering flames of anger, always so hot, so close within me, grew unbearable. Could they not just let it go? I was caught up by my denial, now, and I could not go back. Now a third man, an officer who had been with those that arrested Yeshua, looked at me carefully, intently.

“This man was with them, I am certain,” he said to his friends gathered around, “for he too is a Galilean.”

I cursed, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about!” At the very moment that the words came from my lips the third time I heard a rooster crow with its loud voice, three times. The blood drained from my face, and my strength fled. I collapsed backwards against a pillar, remembering His words, “before the rooster crows this day...”

Far across the court Caiaphas' guards were questioning Him, striking Him. When the rooster crowed, He turned His head and met my eyes once more, unblinking through the rivulets of blood that streamed down his face. Images from our years together flashed through me, striking me with lightning force:

Gaiety and joy of a wedding, dancing, laughing, wine by the barrel, tables of food, the radiant bride and glowing groom whirling around each other...a servant whispering in the ear of the father of the bride, gesturing at a wine barrel...Yeshua's mother, sweet young Mary telling Him that they had run out wine, Yeshua giving gentle instructions...the stunned surprise when the master of the feast when he tasted the wine...

Baptizing with His wild-eyed cousin John...

Crossing through Samaria, breaking custom and tradition, the woman of ill-repute at the well at mid-day and the baffling discussion of “living water” and then the crowds of Samaritans milling around Him and seeking the truth with such fervency...

The uncountable thousands of ill and lame that came to Him, so trusting, so believing...all healed...men lame since birth standing up and walking away, blind men seeing, dancing and laughing at the beauty of the world around them, lepers casting off their rags and rejoining society...

Crowds of thousands being fed with a few loaves of bread and some fish...

The storm on the Sea of Galilee, rowing furiously with the others, we see a ghostly, radiant figure striding across the waves...our superstitious panic and terror wells up, until His voice came to us across the water, strong and bold and reassuring...love and trust welling up inside me, stepping out over the side,Thomas clutching at my sleeve in disbelief as I step onto the surface of the water...it felt like the sand on the beach, shifting and slipping under my feet, but ultimately solid as long my eyes are fixed upon Him, His arms outstretched towards me. A thunderous crash of lightning stole my attention from His luminous face to the ten foot waves and wind-whipped rain pelting against my face and I began to slip beneath the waves. “Lord! Help me!” I cried out to Him.

“Oh, you of little faith,” He said to me, His voice gentle and reproachful. “Why did you doubt?” As He speaks, He reaches out a hand—even though mere moments ago He was a dozen feet away across a roiling field of waves—and grasps mine, His grip is firm and strong, He stands legs splayed and back straight, lifting me bodily out of the water with one hand as if I were a child, me, a heavy, thick-muscled fisherman. When He grasps my hand my fear abates instantly and I know I was foolish to doubt Him...He would never abandon me, never allow me to sink beneath the waves.

I slammed back into the present and I saw Him across the courtyard with blood stinging His sinless eyes, loving me silently, perfectly, and I realize that I have failed Him. I stumbled blindly out of the room, heart beating to burst in my chest, crushing guilt in my gut, tears burning my eyes and dripping like liquid shame down my face. I feel gazes on me as I run sobbing from the court of Caiaphas the high priest.

I cannot think on the hours that followed, the scourge ripping His back and sides, the inch-long thorns of the mock crown digging into His skull, the dull thud of the hammer driving spikes into His wrists...oh my Lord...how can they do this to You? Why do You let this happen? You commanded the very wind and waves to be still, and they subsided, You commanded Lazarus to rise from his days-old grave, and he rose, You can command a host of angels to rescue You, but You remain hung there on the cross, laboring for breath, blood painting You crimson. The mock You, they jeer at You, those godless, vicious Romans. We disciples sit around your feet, weeping silently. You comfort us with Your eyes even as You die.

The sun stood at its apex, full and burning hot...then shadows crept from beneath the horizon and stole over the land, covered the sun as if to hide the earth and the sun and the moon and the stars from the shame of what mankind is doing to its Savior. The crowds murmured and made signs to ward off evil, knowing in their hearts that something momentous is occurring.

We still do not understand completely why You do this. How can we?

You call out in a voice loud enough to reach the farthest of the crowd of thousands who gathered to watch You crucified, you call for your Father, ask Him why He has forsaken You, and it is then that I begin to glimpse a fragment of what it is You do, there on the cross. I remember the sacrificial lambs on the altar and I see you, there on the cross, and I understand. It staggers me. I cannot completely comprehend it. How could I? Is this for me? Because of my sin? Did I do this to You? I look to my left and see my brother Andrew, and I can tell he is wondering the same thing, and there are James and John and Mary Magdalene, of all us...all thinking, is this because of me, my Lord?

The Sea of Tiberias was calm that day, the day He came to us for the last time. We sat on the beach, still full of marvel at the manner of His death, and full of wonder at the manner of His resurrection. As the day came to an end, however, I simply couldn't sit still anymore.

“I am going fishing,” I said. I didn't know what else to do. I had to do something, anything at all to make sense of the roiling thoughts and emotions that gripped me. I am a simple man, a fisherman, being out on the water has always been a place of solace, a refuge, a place to go and think. The difficult, rhythmic work of casting out the nets and pulling them in has always helped me think. The others all looked at me blankly for a moment. We hadn't fished nearly at all since the day He called us to be “fishers of men,” and now, in the midst of events that promised to change everything, I wanted to go fishing. “Typical Peter,” I heard someone mutter, probably James, son of Zebedee. But in the end they all put shoulder to hull and shoved off with me. We caught nothing all the night through. I didn't care, I was just glad to be physically exhausted, so tired and sore that I couldn't spend any more energy trying to come to grips with the import of His sacrifice.

Dawn was breaking, our nets were empty, and we about to beach the boats when we heard a voice from shore saying, “Children, do you have any fish?”

“No,” we answered.

“Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” We exchanged baffled glances, but did as the figure on the shore had suggested. John and James and I cast the net on the right side and pulled it in, only to find it so heavy with wiggling, flipping silver-skinned fish that we could not manage it alone. Thomas and Nathanael of Cana lent their strength to the pull. When we had the net in, we slumped to the deck, exhausted. John, however, was peering at the figure intently. He turned to me, gripping my shoulder, and said, “It is the Lord!”

I turned to look again, and saw that John was right. I put on my robe, jumped in and swam to Him. I do not know how to express with this pen the joy that thrilled through me when I crawled from the water and threw myself into His arms. It really was He! He wrapped his arms around me, and I felt a burst of peace rise up inside me. He held me like a father, and I heard, as I had when first He called me, “you are mine.”

We ate fish and broke bread, and for a little while all was as it had been, an early breakfast under the light of dawning day. Then, He turned to me and said, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” How could He ask me that? It broke my heart to hear Him doubt me. I hung my head, knowing I had earned that doubt.

“Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” My voice trembled as I spoke.

“Feed my lambs,” He said to me. I opened my mouth to speak a promise, but He spoke over me, gently but firmly. “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Now my heart was cracked and falling apart. I loved Him with all that I am. I had failed Him once, but never again. Surely He, the Messiah, could see in me how much I loved Him. Couldn't He?

“Yes Lord; you know that I love you.” Now my words came thickly, slowly, heavily, sadly.

“Tend my sheep.” Once more, I took a breath to speak, but He didn't give me a chance.

“Simon, son of John,” He began, a third time, and now tears fell from my eyes, and I struggle to stand from the weight of my grief. “Do you love me?”

I could barely speak, so the words emerged as a broken half-sobbed whisper. “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.” Oh, I was broken, then. I struggled to meet His gaze through my tears, and I saw...I saw so much there, in His eyes, such infinite love, such forgiveness, and I understood with lightning-swift clarity why He had asked me, three times, if I loved Him. Each time, He was forgiving me for each denial. Each time He asked me, “do you love me?” He was wrapping His arms around me and whispering in my ear, “you are mine,” and making me eternally His.

“Feed my sheep,” He said, once more. His next words reverberated in my soul, echoed deeply. “Truly, truly I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” To the last, speaking in riddles. The parables, the stories, the lessons, all seemed so clear, but always there was an element that we knew we were missing. What did this mean? It seemed frighteningly like a prophesy of my death. At last, He turned to me and told me to follow Him...

And I followed Him, across the whole earth, speaking of Him, preaching His message with words given to me as I needed them. I followed, I kept the faith in all circumstances. I vowed that I would never again fail or deny Him, no matter the cost.

So now, here I sit in a jail cell beneath the Holy City, Jerusalem, waiting for the guards to take me up and take from me the ultimate cost. I am old now, and tired. I do not go willingly, for I would spend my last breath, my last shred of strength bringing the good news of His life, death, and resurrection to all peoples. I was never so at home as when aboard a ship plying the seas, rolling with the swells, climbing up and crashing down, sail bellied out with a strong wind, a new place drawing near, new people in need of His joy. He has been beside me all the while, down every road, across every sea, whispering to me, “you are mine,” and “follow me.”

I am His, so I followed Him.

I realize now what His very first words to me meant. I never understood it until this moment, as the guard's key turns in the lock. “Come,” He commanded, “and I will make you fishers of men.” I put aside, then, the nets and ceased casting for fish. I took up a net of His message and cast it for men. He truly made of me a fisher of men.

They will stretch out my hands, and dress me, and carry me where I do not wish to go...I know this. I am afraid. This will be my last test, my last sermon. Lord, you know I love you.

They took him, one at each arm, half-dragged him up the mossy stone steps into daylight, dressed him, brought him before a tribunal. “Deny this madness,” they commanded him. “Deny this false prophet, this Yeshua of Nazareth.

“Deny Him, and we will set you free,” they promised him. The stood before him, resplendent in polished silver mail, bright crimson cloaks and crested helmets held smartly beneath arms, pila gripped in gloved hands. He was old, bent, gray, wrinkled, but he bore the marks of a man once mighty. He pulled himself erect, grimacing with the effort, spread his feet apart as he had for a lifetime to balance against the rolling deck of a fishing boat. He closed his eyes, briefly, lips forming a silent prayer. He opened his mouth to speak, and when he did so, he gained new life, as if he had been imbued with a spirit of vitality and eloquence. He spoke one last message to a crowd gathered to watch the execution of this man, Peter, who had walked with the Christ.

“Yeshua of Nazareth,” Peter said in a voice preternaturally powerful, carrying to the farthest spectator, “was the Messiah. I walked with Him, I loved Him, and I served Him all my life. I will not deny Him.” Peter then spoke the Good News, and not one of the Romans interrupted him. They all stood, spellbound, as he spoke, and there was more than one stone heart softened and stirred in that place.

The centurion gave a curt command, and the legionnaires stretched him upon the cross, stripped him, hammered the spikes through thin, purple-veined wrists, lifted him up, and watched him die.

At the last he looked to Heaven as if seeing a dear friend once more. “Lord, you know everything,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

And he gave up his spirit.

Old and Lovely

She sleeps, this city. She sleeps and dreams, deep, slow, old dreams of better days gone by. I alone wander her streets, stumbling and mumbling and drunk. I love her, in my bones and my soul, I love her. Few do, anymore. I get angry to think of how far they've let her fall, how dirty her streets have become, how cluttered and shuttered and dank her alleys, how burned out and infested and forgotten her once-proud homes. I was born here, back in the glory days when that filthy rich old anti-Semite Henry Ford was building his empire out of desperate men and black-skinned migrants and paying them top wages. I picked pockets here and snuck smokes and did the dirty for the first time with sweet, smooth-skinned Millie Janowski. Oh God, I remember that night clear as crystal. Just kids, we were, young and fumbling and wet-palmed and eager. In the corner of a derelict factory at the edges of town on a rucked quilt we clutched at each other and clumsily kissed; in the dim, diffused glow of the moonlight through dusty windows we loved each other...I say loved, but at such a tender age is it really love?

I lean against a rough brick wall and swig from the paper-wrapped bottle, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of a streetlamp. The memories are flooding back tonight, for some reason. There are nights like this, where the cars are few and sirens distant, when I feel like I'm the only one left here to love this once-great city, when memory seems to beat in my veins in place of blood, remembrance in place of breath. I take another swig, stumble a bit further and slump into my pile of newspapers and boxes, let the huge, hovering history of this place lower itself over me and take me away with its succubus kiss.

Maybe it's me who's dreaming, instead of the city. Maybe the liquor has taken me away to when I was young and strong and full of verve and vigor and the future lay before me waiting to be plundered. Instead of sirens and gunshots and oppressive silence, I hear laughter and tinkling glasses and music from bars and nightclubs, I see couples wandering down clean streets wearing their about-town best, furs and fedoras, black-and-white oxfords and patent-leather pumps. I am barely a teenager, lurking in shadows with my best buddies, all older than me, cupping smokes like we see the union boys do, like the ex-GI's with Omaha Beach and Battle of The Bulge glittering hard and cold in their eyes. We pretend to be rough and tough, slug a drunk and take his change for cheap booze, we tumble gals in the back of rusted-out old Packards, we have this city as our oyster and we plunder it for all we can.

One night I'm lying in bed and voices are loud at the front door. Pop never came home from work. A factory accident, I never knew exactly what. Ma does her best, odd jobs and late shifts, but its never enough. When I'm sixteen and Mary is fourteen, Ma just vanishes, gone one morning with a suitcase and a traveling salesman, leaves a few bucks on the stove and not even a note. Mary ain't long behind her, takes up with a rich banker sort, gets by on looks and loose legs. I see her from time to time, then I don't no more and it's just me, scraping by. I hear about Korea, sign up, travel to a foreign land on a floating tin can full of old vets and scared boys.

It's hell, a pure and blood-soaked hell of rice paddies and dead men on obscure hills. I live through it, physically. My soul is never the same. I block out the memories when I get home, but I can't ever shake the nightmares. I take up the bottle to drown them out. Eventually I find a factory job and a woman. She was long-legged and buxom, sweet as sugar and soft as silk and sinful in the sack. Too good for me and my dreams of lost legs and spattered gore, my tall, vanishing bottles of golden whiskey that slowly eat away my soul. She loves me as best she can, as long as she can, but it's no use. She packs a valise, just like Ma, and flies to Hollywood in the arms of a producer with small round sunglasses and bell-bottoms.

The beginning of the end, that was. It began the slow inevitable descent into self-made hell. More whiskey, a bottle a day most days, then a little pot and a little coke, just every now and again with bar buddies and fellow vets, and then my boss at the Ford plant found me passed out one day, skunk drunk and high as a kite in the bathroom, and that was that. I just stopped trying, if I'm being honest. The bank took the house and I lived in my beat-up old F-150, until that got stolen. It seemed easiest to just let go, to abandon myself into what I had wrought for myself.

She's all I've got now, this old and lovely city. When I lost everything she took me in, gave me a home in her hidden places. I've watched her change and sicken and crumble over the years, and I grieve for her. She was a brilliant and vibrant place and she's gone to seed now but still she succors me and comforts me. I walk her streets, wide and straight and complex and variegated, I sit on park benches and take in the architecture, the doric columns and corbelled arches and intricately carved capstones, all the many features from when they still put such artistic touches on buildings; I admire too the high-walled canyons of glass and steel echoing with modernity and the ageless curses and loud laughter and idling engines. I stomp drunk and oblivious through the riverside park with the giant disembodied fist and huddle with a hoarded smoke near the Spirit of Detroit statue and watch as masses pour out from Cobo and the Joe Louis. I remember the way she was when she was Motown, thriving and rocking with new and fresh and dynamic music, a city unlike anywhere else.

Oh Detroit, I mourn for you. I weep for you. But I have hope for you.

The young and idealistic are pushing and straining against the downward slide, they're revamping and reusing; I watch her gaining clean new edges in slow increments, I get sudden glimpses of new beauty cropping up in unlikely places. I have hope that in time, she will regain and surpass her old glory.

I won't be around to see it though. There's a chill in my bones now, a deep, penetrating, unreachable cold in the core of me. It spreads, every day, every month. I cannot shake it, cannot warm it or drink it away. I lie awake at night, cold and alone, and I remember.

The sky is black now, flecked with flurrying white flakes of bitter, killing cold snow. I'm huddled in a corner, shivering. I'm not afraid, though. My time has come, and I welcome it. I slump farther down, sliding helplessly until I'm lying down and my face is pointed heavenward. The cold in my bones has spread until it has consumed me from the inside out. I am ready.

Just...remember me, Detroit. I've lain in your streets and sung your praises silently, I've wandered up and down Woodward and whispered my devotion to you, my home. I am forgotten, I know, by the living, by the flesh and blood and bone who rush around me, oblivious and self-absorbed. I am lost to the river of the past, I am remembered only by shades, mourned only by ghosts. So I ask you, Detroit, to remember me as I fall away. I die, and I sing to you a paean, an elegy.

I am floating, drifting. I see the shape of her, from above. I'm not cold anymore. Time flows past me, for I have stepped beyond its banks, and I see in stop-motion glimpses her future stretched out like unfinished road; the fragments I am allowed to see give me peace and my song changes, becomes a tribute.

I take him in to me, swallow his bones, digest his memory. He is gone, forgotten by all but me. I cannot speak in the quick shifting words of the men and women who walk my streets and dwell in my buildings, but I speak of him, nonetheless, in my own slow, heavy language. He is there, among them, in the grizzled beards and dirt-smudged cheeks, in the layers of clothes and shopping carts, in the forgotten names and haunting, tragic stories. That is him, on the park bench, him shuffling and silent and lonely in the shadows. He won't be forgotten, not entirely, for he is part of me.