Jill Lockhart’s Neighborhood

I remember the morning heat, and the way it built alongside the clamor from those who came for the executions.  They were public affairs in those days; not like now, when death is a matter of privacy laws and human dignity.  No—the Romans would have laughed at these modern absurdities, and the Sanhedrin would have let them laugh, complicit in the spectacle.  And it was a spectacle: busy, loud, tumultuous things that spanned great lengths of the city, Pharisees and Gentiles and Sadducees all crowding to witness.

I wore a cloak, and wound a scarf about my head against the heat and the sun in the manner of the local men.  I clung to what little shade I could find while moving through the crush of bodies.  Their earthy stink, their excitement, the ringing noise of their layered voices.  I'll confess to irritation—but now, I'm unsure if it was at their naked schadenfreude, the Christ's farce as he struggled toward Golgotha, or—

—or maybe its was the opposite.  Because, God or not, he was suffering.  It was written into the rivulets of blood that dripped from his bent brow and into the dust, even after Pilate ordered the ugly crown removed.  Gibson made it into a spectacle himself—but he had the general idea.  It wasn't simply the physical pain, and the way the man's thin sun-burnt body bent under the weight of the beams that would later support his dying bones.  It was the resignation.  His despair.

I realized that there was a separation between Father and Son.  It's become a matter of doctrine and ceaseless debate; but you can't understand it in human terms.  You are made of dust.  We are made of God.  You were crafted in Father's image.  We are Father's image.  We are His fragments.  We are His cuttings, in the way you can propegate the growth of a plant, like a rose, by severing its connection to the parent and placing that cutting in fertile soil.  The new plant and the old grow separately, distinct from each other.

Yet the parent and the child are the same.  The same substance.  But no longer the same will.

I wonder if I could have stopped it.  If I had known what Father meant to do, or the sort of instrument the Christ would become, I would have.  Thrown off the cloak and the concealment of my skin, and ground the pulp of his blood and bones into the dirt of Jerusalem.  And had the Morning Star known, he might have cast the Christ from the top of the mountain, rather than tempting him.  No rising from the dead, no messages to his Apostles, no martyrdom to the Romans.  Christianity might never have existed: just stories of a Nazarene madman.

Phantom trajectories of time.  Useless now.

But I felt pity.  And we didn't know.  The Christ himself had by now gained a vague understanding of his purpose, and who he was, but little more.  The Hill of Skulls waited just beyond the five-hundred-year-old city walls, and he approached it with bleeding feet.  What lay in wait for him afterward was a blank, unknown expanse.  But he had been ordered.  And in retrospect, I wonder: Who the sheep? Who the shepherd?

He was thronged by screaming faces.  His breath came in rattling gasps, half-dead already.

My own attention lay elsewhere—because this was a matter of waiting, swallowing my eagerness and my restlessness and my desperation.  The Morning Star had learned that, for a brief time, at the moment of the Christ's death, the Golden Chain, the Ladder, would be accessible—a clear open path to rush upward and reclaim our lost kingdom.  We rallied and lay quiet across Jerusalem.  I and Haborym, Ronove and Bifrons, countless more, an entire swarm of us.  What would become the Holy Land was festering with devils.

"You will know the sign," Lucifer had assured me, "when you see it."

And I had been selected to shatter the Gates.  Wrest them open with my own hands.

I expected resistance, but I hadn't been prepared for Uriel.  Uriel, with Father's backing, waiting for me.  Useless.  Useless.  It had been useless.

I had been useless.

I wake up swallowed in darkness, and for a moment it feels like the center of an eclipse.  Sun blotted out.  Absolute black.  I grope for the little body tangled in the sheets beside me, but Nary—

It takes me a moment to remember that Nary had not said a word when we'd arrived home.  She'll be sheltering in Corbin's room tonight, because Master is a monster.

sign

gabriel

Only few pilgrims have followed the star.  They are Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, unknown to each other and lost within the rambling grid of New Amsterdam.  Some sought family, while others sheltered within the walls of a church, and the rest joined the destitute without food or warmth, but with a clear view of the object they followed.  It shone in the night sky, a single point that remained distinct even as electric lights drowned the remaining stars with dim, false daylight.

As I knew they must, they followed when the star moved northward.  Those with cars used them, and those without began on foot, on U.S. Route 209.  By chance, happenstance, or design, they began to draw together.  I cannot know if this is what Father intended of me from the beginning; but by the time three weeks had passed, they arrived together in a small, mismatched contingent.  Time enough had passed for them to know each other; they disagreed on points of theology, in nuances of ritual and observation, but their intent was the same.

They followed, as Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar had before them.

The little town of Rochester lies sheltered by the foothills of the Catskills as they roll through Ulster County, and the aging house sits on its fringe, surrounded by copses of white pine and spruce.  They found me there, and they were initially startled that a strange man should be waiting for them.  But I held up my palm in peace, and I spoke with the authority given me, so that several dropped to their knees before I could take one by the hand, and bid the rest calm themselves and rise:

“Do not fear, for I am Gabriel, who stands before God.”

Ah, but Father.  They're children.  Devout, yes, that they made this journey—some from across the seas, continents distant from this one, as far as the Christ herself.  They owe their unwavering fealty to Thee, and yet the thoughts of some border on heretic.  Still, I will do with them as need dictates.  The Catholics in particular seem adept exorcists, and perhaps with their assistance and  Thy favor, I'll drive Naberius back into the Abyss, and my work will be done far before he can return.

If they should die, I beseech Thee: allow them to join the saints by Thy side, as martyrs, that they might praise Thy glory even as we do.

Already, the enemy advances.  I catch his spies glimpsing in through windows, the rebellious ravens that refused to obey the word of Noah, who were compelled by Thee to feed Elijah in the wilderness.  Intelligent birds.  Clever as they perch on the windowsills of the old manse, and glare on the pilgrims as they go about their daily prayers and preparations.  I've explained to them what they must do.  Within these dusty walls, they prepare for war.

And yet—so much remains uncertain.  I cannot reveal that I wonder at the state of the world.  There is but silence from Thee.  I expected my Lord, the first Christ, and not a new emanation of Thee.  This child was born without my knowing, so that the star arrived long after its time, in a country I did not foresee, and she lived—no, best not to imagine what has been done with her, even when my wrath would be just.  Perhaps she has endured agony and crucifixion already, that she should never suffer again.

charting the sky

Thank you.

You start small, with simple games of point-and-name: Bed, Dress, and even Cat as she watches a tortoise-shell stray slink under a parked car and disappear during a sunny weekday morning walk.  Simple but steady stimulus, with periodic repetitions.  You soon evolve to verbs in single syllables, the everyday things.  Eat.  Sleep.  And you incidentally find yourself following Maslow's pyramid; though I plan to leave its base far, far below before too long.  An empress should not labor at the base of a pyramid, but be elevated to its peak.

Still.  She understands, or is beginning to understand, yet repeats only when nudged.  She reduces language to Please Master, with the looks and gestures we've been using from the start, when she stared up at me with those big and deep-dark eyes and I abruptly knew that she would be mine.  Even had things been clear to me then, I'd still have done it.  Another simple word: Kiss.

She is a quiet, vocally reserved.  As a rule, she does not cry, and I don't intend to make her.  She speaks with those eyes, her baby fingers tugging at my sleeve or grasping at my jaw or my cheekbones, and with chirruping sounds like a contented animal might make.  Let's not knock them aside.  Let them be the foundation of Nary's language, and let us simply add: like gabled towers to the palace, buttressed with English and eventually French or German, Greek and Latin and Hebrew.  Let her study the Scriptures in their native tongues.  Maybe we'll have a good laugh about it, when she's a grown woman, slight but gorgeously dark and exotic, and I still sit her on my knee.

If we make it that far.  If the towers don't all come crashing down.

Difficult, the prospect of relinquishing some of my grasp over her.  I'd be a liar, yes, if I didn't admit that power weren't involved.  And I'm supposed to lie, aren't I?  But the utter dependency of a child is intoxicating.  Even if I were a man, I'd be God in her eyes, the way a parent is God to any child.  And so she overflows with it, with faith in me like nectar, and I feel debauched, overflowing from the pores.  To loosen my grasp, relinquish it—ah, but don't crush the little nightingale, Marquis.  Don't be a fool.  Keep her tethered, keep her close, but don't ruin her because you're afraid.

You want her to thrive.  You want her to grow.  You want to give her all the things your father didn't, don't you.

So I let her fumble with the fork at dinner time, and brush her own teeth, and watch as she explores the flat with that fresh wonderment I envy—the mundane rendered extraordinary.  Puzzles to be solved, riddles to be undone.  Standing in front of the mirror and adjusting my tie in the morning, I let her pull on her clothes and slip into her own shoes.  But there are inevitably buttons she can't fasten, laces she can't tie, and I kneel down to help her.  She does not always articulate it, but occasionally her gratitude will escape in a clumsy-tongued, genteel murmur.

And whether or not I use words, my answer's the same:

You're welcome.

Feels strange to be drinking the wine—a vintage I can't name, but which tastes familiar, prying at my memory's faded edges.  Like the Pinot noir she replaced, it has a rich but subtle flavor on my tongue.  I shouldn't be surprised.  Of course, I've already decided.  There was never a need for deliberation.  But I need a few hours of isolation to take everything in: the enormity of the thing, somehow compressed into Nary's undersized frame.

Harming her, stopping her before she can affect the course of events is out of the question.  I could.  I could rend her flesh and bones, gnash her between my teeth.  It would be over before she could scream—and that would be the end of the Christ.  Not with a bang, but with a whimper.  Father's Host and the exiles and I would all be at a stalemate, and perhaps it would last forever, neither here nor there, quick nor dead, treading this mortal limbo until—

Until what?

It a few hours before dawn and the sky has grown a pale azure.  L'heure bleue, right before daybreak, right after sunset.  The star has faded to the ghost of a glimmer.  Even when I can't see it, can delude myself in brief moments that it isn't hanging above my head, it'll continue staring down.  Well then—let's have a contest, shall we?  Like the Children of Man do.  Let's see who blinks first.

I haven't bothered with a jacket.  The air is warm for November, but out on the balcony, with the tile chilled against the soles of my feet and the high breeze lancing through my shirt, the cold wakes me completely.  Sleep proved elusive last night—and she, curled in the blankets by my hip as I sat up on the pillows, may never understand why.  I've left her to dream safe and warm.  But I imagine Corbin is awake—waiting for the next order.

They'll be coming.  It's a beacon, this new Star of Bethlehem, for wise men and kings, angels and devils.  Kill her, and Father's plans are irreparably halted.  Save her, and the promise of the Thousand-Year Kingdom gleams brightly in the future—for the saints, for the chosen few.  Not for us.  But is it all that simple?  It sounds like Father's rhetoric to me.  Dogma in stark black and white.

Leaning on the balcony's rail, I watch the incessant flow of traffic on the street below, and the gradual brightening of the gleaming steel skyline.  The glass is cool in my hand.  I raise the wine-dampened rim to my lips and drain the rest.

For now, she is only a child with wide and adoring eyes.  Could that love ever wither—one day mirror Father's condemnation?  I struggle to envision it; but the possibility is something I won't deny.  I can only continue onward, regardless of what choice she makes.  For now, she trusts me entirely, placing herself into my hands without fear or reservation or guile, utterly, the way only a child can.

How else can I answer her, except by keeping faith?

The downpour was merciless, unapologetic. It covered the earth in a constant sheet of rain, leaving the alley way road oil-slick (as black as the hair of a man standing nearby) and everything else sopping wet. The wind was sharp and crisp, sending wave upon wave of cold air rushing against the fierce hollows of the man's cheeks. He hadn't sleep, hadn't rested, in days and it was painfully evident. A bell rang solemnly through the air some distance away, alerting the town of the midnight hour. It reminded one of a funeral, the end of something. There was a girl a few steps behind the man, screaming in a shrill, horrible voice -- but in his frenzy, he could not tell whether the girl was actually screaming or whether it was the horrendous roar of the winter wind, instead. It didn't matter either way.
 
"Zay! Don't! Please-please-please, God, please don't! He doesn't know anything, baby! I swear he doesn't!" She was screaming and watching with horrified, wide eyes, begging and pleading with her lover to stop the violence. To let the man he had a hold of go. Isaiah didn't listen. Every few moments, he was sending a cracking blow against the side of the other man's face.
 
"Lexi, shut the fuck up!" Blind rage, it had its possession over Isaiah. White-hot behind the eyes, a throb of blood through the veins. It hurt. It all fucking hurt. "I can't think straight with you fucking yapping! Shut the fuck up!" His yell was terrifying. Loud and thunderous, it seemed to fill all those empty spaces left in one's soul. It could be felt in the body, in the blood. That's how angry he was, how bad he was hurting.
 
Upon closer inspection, one could see Isaiah held a man against the brick wall of an abandoned building. The man was a bit shorter than Isaiah, with blond hair that was plastered to his forehead and curled around his ears from the rain. Any evidence of blood (for surely there were lots of it) was being washed away by the heavy fall of rain. All of it, all the evidence, being swept away by the winter storm. "Where is she, Terrance?" Strained, Isaiah's voice, his eyes wide and blank, and his teeth -- God, his teeth -- were clenched together so tightly you'd think they'd crack any second.
 
"I-I-I don't know, Isaiah, swear I don't! I told ya, I don't work for him no more. I don't know what they do behind closed doors no more, Isaiah, c'mon, it's me!" The man was trembling. He'd never in his life seen his friend so angry, so filled with hate. It scared him. But what scared him even more was the sharp sound of a switchblade, the cold feel of metal pressed against his throat. Terrance was so scared, in fact, that he pissed his pants -- yet another thing the rain hid and swept away. "C-calm down, calm right the fuck down now. I don't know where he took her, Isaiah! All I know is that one minute he needed to talk to her and the next she was go--" He trailed off, words garbled, as Isaiah pressed the knife harder against Terrance's throat.
 
Wrong answer.
 
"What do you mean 'he needed to talk to her'? You never fucking told me that before!" Isaiah was losing it. He sent another crashing blow to the side of Terrance's face, bloodied and bruised, and began pacing. He was grunting in frustration, dragging his fingernails so painfully against his scalp that the others could almost hear it. He kicked at cardboard boxes, tin trash cans, anything within his reach.
 
And Lexi, God, Lexi kept screaming and screaming. Isaiah couldn't tell whether or not she was crying -- tears and rain look just alike, you know -- and he didn't care at that point. He just wanted her to shut up. He didn't want to hear her anymore. He turned to Lexi, his stare deadly and determined.
 
She immediately started rambling, voice cracking. "Baby? You don't look like yourself. Let's go home. Please, let's go home. Terrance doesn't know anything, he would have told you. You know he would have. I want her back just as badly as you do, I promise you, but there's nothing we can do right no--"
 
The sound that came next was almost more terrible than that of the switchblade. A sharp slap to the face, and the sound of it echoed -- no, it bounced -- off the rain-wet walls on either side of them. Lexi stopped talking, stopped breathing, and for a moment, she looked stunned. Her lower lip quivered as she stared at Isaiah in disbelief.
 
And then, lowly: "I said shut the fuck up." Isaiah didn't even acknowledge the red print against Lexi's cheek.
 
"Now, look here, Isaiah. That ain't necessary, yanno?" Now that Isaiah didn't have Terrance against the wall anymore, the blond-haired man felt brave. "Let's all just go have some drinks and talk it out, yeah? I'm sure Emmaline will come turn up, Isaiah. They always do. Hell, she ain't been gone that long anyway. Just a few weeks. Maybe she ran off with somebody?"
 
Terrance was pale white and scared, but he still had the audacity to try to sneak up on the other man.
 
Isaiah was caught off guard -- it wasn't my fault -- by Terrance's sudden movements. One moment, he felt an excruciating pain at the side of his jaw (Terrance had managed to find a brick while Isaiah was dealing with Lexi, and had attempted to knock Isaiah out with it), and the next he felt the sticky-hot trickle of blood on his hand.
 
On his own hand. A sudden flash of lightening, illuminating the sky with a blinding white light, made the scene seem so much more surreal, so hard to take in.
 
He'd stabbed Terrance in the stomach, but God, God, it wasn't my fault, not my fault, and he took a step back. Lexi was screaming again, running to Terrance to check his wound. As if on cue, a loud crack of thunder vibrated through the air, synchronizing precisely, eerily so, with Terrance's fall.
 
"Oh my God, Zay, did you kill him?! Did you?! I have to call an ambulance! I have to--"
 
But Isaiah didn't remember what happened next. He was twitching too violently, and then everything went black.    

Instruction can take several forms, but I've found modeling and repetition the most effective. Young children in particular learn by imitation—and so charming, the way Nary will fumble to upturn her jacket's collar, and the way it tends to frame the softness of her cheek and fragile jawbone. She follows the direction of my eyes, the gestures of my hand, and I may have caught her, once or twice, attempting to ape my expression. She's a natural mimic.

This, of course, will be far beyond her ability. But I want to acclimate her to these strange objects, these obtuse rituals. And so we're dressed for Sunday dinner—or at least Corbin and I are, both of us freshly shaven and dressed in pressed suits, and I'm sure that the half-Windsor knot like a noose around my throat is impeccable. Nothing out of place. The poised trappings of a child aristocrat can come later; I leave Nary, for now, in a simple dress colored like buttercream. A sugared confection. It complements her skin, which glows from her recent bath.

Corbin has set the table. Start small, with a simple family place setting. I don't even know if she's seen a fork, and stemware must be utterly foreign. There's a bottle of Burgundy Pinot noir, and we've been draining it a slow glass at a time. I've placed the tiniest amount in Nary's glass, but I don't expect her to like it. I sit beside her, with Corbin across from both of us, thoughtfully watching as I show her with exaggerated care just how to hold the knife and fork; the tenderness of the salmon filet causes it to melt at the barest pressure.

We've left Thelonius Monk playing in the background, low, soft. Nothing obtrusive. But let's affect her palette early—for clothing, food, music, for words and poise, for sights and smells. The lamplight falls soft and gold on the tabletop, the white linen cloth and the gleaming hardwood.

I take a taste; and it's good, damn good. I might prefer a Chateaubriand, but anything that bleeds trumps vegetable life; and salmon should be perfect for Nary. A new taste, but easy on the tongue, something that dissolves and nourishes her poor underfed bones. We'll make you strong, darling.

I cut another sliver, and cupping my palm beneath her chin, offer her the morsel on the fork's tines.

Corbin has been silent. It's only when he speaks that I realize he's been waiting for the right time and, not finding it, must break into the tableau with a calm, quiet dose of reality:

“Is there really time for this, Master?”

There's an ache somewhere in his voice. That's why I'm not angry. He wants there to be time enough, just like I do. The star is back again tonight, not some passing nocturnal fluke, and drawn curtains keep neither of us from feeling its weight. But I tell him:

“Of course there is. It's not the end of the world yet.”

I sense his nod more than see it, because my attention remains on the child.

And finally he asks: “More wine?”

still life with salmon, manet

herald

"What is he?"

Around them, the langauge spoken is predominantly Cantonese. Their table overlooks Victoria Harbour through the picture window, but Kim Kong Kea hardly notices the brilliant lights from Wan Chai or the slow progress of ferry boats across the black water. He drinks the Château Margaux slowly, mechanically. It is a formality, like shaking hands and the reserved pleasantries he exchanged with the Englishman before dropping the pretenses.

"The peasant mentioned seeing the wings of a crow."

"If he is who I believe," the other answers, his Cantonese meticulously unaccented, his tonal shifts pitch-perfect so that Kong Kea is momentarily surprised that a white-skinned gwailo could possess such fluency, "he is a devil we've sought for years upon years."  He smiles, and his broad hands are folded composedly on the table.  Kong Kea has payed for the entire lavish bottle, but the other has only taken a token drink.  A courtesy, polite.  Professional.

Good.

"Devil?" Kong Kea asks. That word again, devil: gwai.

"In the Judeo-Christian tradition, rather than the Buddhist.  'Devil'," he pronounces the word in English before switching back to Cantonese, "not a soul reborn in Naraka."

He is pale-haired, the British man, with chiseled features that defy age with their strong, clean angles. Thirty or forty. Blue-eyed, straight-limbed, his clothing handsome and impeccable without a trace of stiffness.  He is one of the outsiders remaining in Hong Kong after the decade-old exchange between Britain and the People's Republic.  Retreating to their ancestral places; leaving the land in rightful hands.

"You can kill him?" the aging man demands to know, his deep-set eyes sharp, and the frown that he cannot hide forms wrinkles of tension between his heavy brows and deep lines along his gaunt cheeks.

"Kill is not precisely correct.  But I can mete punishment and suffering upon his head." A pause. The outsider leans forward slightly, the cerulean gaze steady. Kong Kea misses the trace of intensity, the barely-perceptible hitch in the other's calm.  He is distracted, barely hears: "You said this devil is somewhere in New York—Manhattan.  And I understand that he has a child in his possession, and your son—"

A delicate muscle convulsively shivers with tension along the line of the pale man's jaw.

"The child is unimportant," Kong Kea says quietly but sharply. "Take her. I don't care. But I want something."

"What might that be?"

"All who meet him speak of his eyes."  He thinks of Sangha's ruined body, staring blankly at nothing.  With nothing.  "—I want you to bring them back to me."