Discover the Destroyer Read online

  "Nice try," she said and hung up.

  I drove to the Boston Market in Skokie. Jalil's car was parked in the lot. I found him working the counter in a mostly empty store.

  "Those red potatoes are looking a little rank," I said.

  "Then order the mashed," he said.

  Jalil is not a person who is ever going to look happy wearing a name tag and an apron.

  "You here for chicken?" he asked me.

  I leaned in close across the counter. He backed away a few inches.

  "I fell asleep, man."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I mean, I didn't wake anyone up to pull next shift. I fell asleep.

  We're all over there zoned out in the grass and no one watching out."

  "What am I supposed to do about it?"

  "Nothing, man, I'm just checking to see. I mean, maybe you woke up and pulled your shift, right? Maybe Christopher woke up on his own and then you pulled your shift after him."

  "I don't think so."

  The manager, a short, chubby, kind of hyper woman came over and bustled around in the display case. "Jalil, we need a new tray of reds."

  "Told you they were getting skanky," I said.

  "I'll take care of it," Jalil told his boss. "Listen, David, let's pretend this conversation never happened, okay? There's nothing you can do or I can do about over there. So in the meantime how about not letting Christopher and April know that you screwed up? You know? Your credibility isn't all that high right now."

  That burned. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

  "Don't play ignorant, David, you know what I'm talking about."

  "Hey, you don't seem to mind having little what's-her-name, Idalia, pawing all over you."

  "Red potatoes, don't forget," the manager called out in a chiding voice.

  "Give it up, man. You think there's some analogy there?" Jalil said. "She's nice to look at. But that's it. All she's after is to pay her obligation to us for saving her and then to ball out and go do whatever it is nymphs do. She thinks maybe we'll go satyr on her; she wants to position me to control you and Christopher."

  You had to admire Jalil's mind. There wasn't a lot of sentimentality getting in the way.

  "I know Senna's using me," I said. "What's the difference? I'm handling Senna."

  Jalil shook his head. "No one is handling Senna. You believe what you want, I know what I know. It's all about power for her, David. She sold us out to Hel because it suited her purpose. Right now it suits her to let us all get along. But that could change. When it does, well, we'll see, won't we?"

  "Go get your potatoes," I snapped.

  "I'm trying to help you out, man. I can separate out the fact that you're exhausted beyond belief so you go to sleep, I can separate that out from whatever else. Christopher? Not so sure he'd see it that way. He might get it into his head that this is all her doing. If it hits the fan again, and it will, we all need to know which way you'll jump."

  "I'll do the right thing, you smug jerk, I'll do the right thing. You guys are quick enough to ask me what's what when there's some kind of danger."

  Jalil nodded. "Yeah. You're right. But you know what, David?

  We're true-blue Americans, we're not some kind of Iraqis or Serbs or whatever. We're not in the Cult of David. None of us is into going down in flames. We don't do that whole 'follow the fool till he gets us all killed' thing." He grinned cynically. "You're our hero, David. Till you screw up."

  I left. Got in my car and burned rubber on the way out of the parking lot. Burned rubber just like the dickweeds I can't stand.

  I'd let Senna get to me. True. I'd fallen asleep. True. And there had been that whole first encounter with Loki. What had happened then was burned into my brain in blazing color.

  I was messing up. I was failing. Tick tock till the ruby burned a hole in my chest and I was asleep and messing up and failing and what then? I felt the panic choke. Sucked in air.

  I felt my chest. Beat beat beat beat.

  I looked at my watch. I was due at work. Had to go on with life, that was the weird thing. I couldn't just throw it all away because in some different universe I was a different person. Still had to go to work, put in the hours, count out the grudging tips, save the paycheck for college expenses and a new starter for the Buick Beast.

  I drove to Starbucks, parked, jumped out, slicked my wet hair back into some kind of order. Two of my fellow employees were having an end-of-shift smoke in the alleyway between Starbucks and the dry cleaners.

  "W'sup, man?" one called to me.

  "My life sucks," I muttered. "Both of them."

  "Heard that."

  I put in my four hours of dribbling espresso and steaming milk and trying to build a wall between me and memory, me and fear, me and the pressure of rush, rush, rush or fail. Asleep and no one trusted me. In love with a girl who had torn my life apart. Dribble another cup of espresso, steam up some more skim, and try not to think of the bitter and deserved recriminations if I failed.

  After work I headed home. Real-world me was tired. Real-world me had stayed up late the night before trying to catch up on homework while watching the Bears lose in overtime.

  I crawled into bed, clean, crisp sheets. Man, what a good feeling. Pil ow. Blanket. Bot le of water on the nightstand.

  I was asleep in two universes.

  And awake in a third.

  Chapter

  IX

  The cabin, oh, no, no, the cabin again.

  Rows of kids sleep in wooden bunks, snoring beneath handmade banners proclaiming the superiority of our cabin over all the other cabins in the fields of canoeing and wood chopping.

  The last fart jokes had all been enjoyed, the last teasing had died out, the good-natured threats of ass-whippings to be administered the next day had all been made.

  The kids sleep. All but one.

  The door opens, cool air, freshening air scented with sweat and paste and chocolate chips.

  The white windbreaker. It's the windbreaker of the mighty, the counselors. It's Donny's wind-breaker.

  And the kids Sleep, all but the one, all but the one who squeezes his eyes shut and tries to fake it, thinking maybe that will work, maybe sleep will be a defense.

  Defense? From what? He doesn't know. He doesn't have a word for it. It can't be named. Not part of his vocabulary, an experience without a word, a suffering without a name.

  Just yell, kid, I say. Just don't lay there and take it and pretend you're asleep, are you stupid? Are you a coward? Maybe you deserve it.

  I can't save him. I tell him, silently, I tell him what to do and I know he hears me, I know he hears me but he won't do it. Why won't he fight back? Why won't he resist?

  My heart is pounding. I should do something. I should be brave. I should go to someone, tell someone, not cry silently with eyes squeezed shut, helpless.

  Poor kid. Poor kid. I do nothing. Poor kid.

  Chapter

  X

  The sun was afternoon strong, burning red through my closed eyelids. I blinked, shielded my face, and looked around. My heart was silent. Nothing moved in my chest.

  The dream was gone. The dream of another me. But his dreams, his nightmares were mine, too, as my dangers were his.

  Memory shared all, made us both into one.

  April asleep. Christopher asleep. Senna sitting, back to the rest of us, maybe asleep, maybe awake. Jalil was standing a few feet away. The nymph was with him. In the sunlight her skin seemed less translucent.

  I got up. Sauntered as casually as I could over to the strange pair. Closer up I could see that Idalia's skin was covered with a leaf pat ern. Like tiny interlocked oak leaves.

  I stared. The effect was of a skintight leotard of leaves. It was at least a little bit more modest.

  "It's the sun," Jalil explained. "She doesn't like the bright sunlight."

  I might have made some remark about photosynthesis but this wasn't the moment. "So?" I said.

  "So, after you w
oke me up for my shift I got confused, accidentally woke you up for the next shift arid you got me back.

  You and I stood watch, just the two of us."

  "That's the story?"

  "That's the story."

  I didn't have anything to say to that. Jalil was lying to protect my reputation. No, correction: He was lying because I was useful to him, to the group as a whole, and Jalil has a good, sharp eye for self-interest.

  And for now that meant he owned me. A piece of me, at least.

  "What do you want?" I asked him bluntly.

  His eyes glittered, unreadable. Then he smiled. Flicked his chin with his fingertips and said, "The time may come when I will ask you to do a service for your Godfather."

  I wasn't amused. Or fooled. Jalil might be presenting it as a joke but we both knew he meant it.

  "Want to see something?" Jalil said. He pointed. "Down there.

  Through the gap in the trees."

  I shaded my eyes from the glare and followed the direction he pointed. We were in a wide, poster-pretty meadow, with deciduous forest around us on three sides. The ground had a slight roll, just enough to raise the occasional patch of lavender or poppies or black-eyed Susans into view. But two rolls sort of met and formed a crease that went down through an open space in the trees. And down there, within easy view in the brilliant sunlight, was a wagon being pulled by two oxen. It was a massive, wooden-stake thing loaded with what looked like agricultural produce of some sort.

  "Down!" I snapped and yanked at Jalil.

  "Relax. It's been going on all morning, all afternoon. It's a road.

  Wagons, chariots, handcarts. They come along every few minutes.

  Going both ways. When it's not a wagon or whatever it's livestock: cows, pigs, a lot of sheep. Mostly going right to left."

  I stood up again, cautious. Too late now to worry about being seen. "Same direction we're heading in."

  "Idalia? What did you call that road?"

  "It is called the Valley Road by some. The Fairy Road by others, or Oberon's Path. Some call it the Roman High Road."

  "Why aren't we on that road?" I asked.

  Idalia laughed. "I cannot walk there! It is not safe for my kind."

  "Does it lead to Fairy Land or whatever? What is the name of this place we're going?"

  "Yes, it leads to the Fairy Lands," Idalia confirmed.

  "She can't leave the woods," Jalil said. "She's a wood nymph.

  We've been talking. She has to stay in the woods unless she's with her goddess. Iris. Greek goddess of something or other."

  "Goddess of the rainbow," Idalia supplied.

  "Yeah. Rainbow. Plus some kind of messenger."

  "And why isn't she with this Iris?"

  "She was banished."

  "Yeah? Why?"

  "You better tell him, Idalia," Jalil said. He looked away, affecting to be very interested in the half-a-Satyr: as it wandered aimlessly around through a field of brilliant yellow wildflowers.

  "Oh, for loving a mortal."

  I raised an eyebrow at Jalil. He refused to notice me.

  "That's not approved of?"

  Idalia laughed. "I approve of it. All nymphs approve, of course.

  There are no males of our own kind. Who should we love if not humans? Dwarfs are so ugly and anyway all they care for is work.

  Elves? Elf men are very beautiful but so are their women. They will not notice a nymph. And the fairy folk do not like my kind."

  I nodded like all this made perfect sense. Nodded like this was all nothing new to me.

  "It's very unfair," Idalia pouted. "We may not love a mortal but there is no one else to love. It is all very well for the great gods and goddesses, Zeus or Aphrodite or even that nasty old Hephaestus to take a human lover. Half-god mortals are everywhere to be found. What is Heracles if not the fruit of a mortal-immortal union?"

  An answer seemed to be demanded. "I don't know."

  "It's all well and good for the great gods to dally with a comely mortal but a nymph is never supposed to enjoy herself."

  "So, what happened is you fell in love with a mortal so Iris basically fired you?"

  Idalia nodded. "It is very unfair."

  "Uh-huh. I can see where that'd be unfair, yeah."

  "Each time I tell her that I am sorry, each time I ask, 'What am I to do?' But every time she catches me, it's off to the forests until her wrath cools."

  Jalil said, "And this has happened before? You being fired by Iris, I mean?"

  Idalia laughed. "Oh yes. Hundreds of times. No matter how many mortals I hide from her, she eventually finds me with one."

  "Explain this to David like you did to me," Jalil said. "You've been caught hundreds of times. But usually you don't get caught, right? So how many mortals have there been?"

  Idalia laughed her babbling-brook laugh. "I don't count them all. Who could count them all? That would be so many. I would be spending all my time with my head crammed full of numbers."

  "Makes you feel special, eh, Jalil?" I said.

  He laughed. "It's what they do, man. I looked up nymphs after work, before I woke up. Nymphs. They come in al dif erent types: dryads, hamadryads, naiads, nereids, oreads. They're a type of minor god. Beautiful young women attached to various big-league gods or else located in the woods, the ocean, so on.

  About all they do is fall in love with humans. 'Fall in love' being the discreet term they use. That and getting chased by satyrs."

  "That's it?"

  Jalil shook his head in disgust. "They're not evolved, see, they're created. Invented. Built by the gods, who I guess never really asked themselves what the nymphs were supposed to do beyond looking pretty and acting easy. They didn't evolve to fit into some ecosystem. They're basically interior decoration: like paintings the gods might hang around Olympus to make the place look good."

  "W.T.E.," I said.

  "That corner looks a little bare. I know, let's get two or three nymphs. Green, I think, to go with the couch."

  He was upset. Maybe by the realization that Idalia's sudden affection for him had all the sincerity of the AOL voice that says,

  "Welcome." Maybe by the injustice of living beings in the likeness of humans who had no real purpose, no hope of a purpose.

  Knowing Jalil, probably that last thing.

  "Watch this: Idalia? What is two plus two?"

  Idalia blinked.

  "I have two trees. I add two more trees. Now how many trees do I have?"

  "Where are these trees?"

  "MTV veejay material there," Christopher said.

  How long he'd been awake and listening, I couldn't guess. Not long or he'd never have been able to restrain some smart remark or other. "That's the career for her. Looks sexy but in a definitely weird way, and can't add two plus two. She's perfect."

  He stood up. I noticed April stirring.

  "Hey, there's a road down there."

  "Yeah. It leads to Fairy Land," I said. "Has to be faster than traveling overland and we are in a hurry. I had to let you guys sleep, but we don't have any time to waste. Idalia says she can't go that way, though."

  Those were the facts, more or less. I kind of felt it was up to Jalil to state the obvious conclusion.

  He said, "Idalia, we have to travel fast. We only have six, well, five days now. So we have to take the road."

  "But I cannot travel upon the road."

  "Yeah, we know that," he said.

  Idalia just smiled her green, empty-headed smile.

  "What I'm saying is, we have to go, and you have to go back to the forest."

  "But I love Jalil!"

  Senna sighed, stood up, came over to us. "Go back to Iris. Her anger has cooled. Run to her, she's impatient."

  There was a squeal and a green blur and Idalia was gone.

  "You could have spent an hour trying to explain it to her,"

  Senna said. "You don't have an hour to waste and anyway she'd never have gotten it."

  "That was really
awfully mean, Senna," April said.

  "Sister, you were asleep so you missed the vital information: She's an automaton. She seduces mortal men, runs away from satyrs, that's it. The whole emotion is a programmed, automatic response from her."

  "Why can't I meet a girl like that?" Christopher asked.

  April said, "Love is programmed into her? You mean, as opposed to being a tool she uses to get her way? An illusion she creates with magic?"

  "Senna's right," Jalil said, moving to cut off an April-Senna confrontation. "We never even really existed for her. What exists is right here." He tapped his chest. He didn't mean his heart. He meant the red stone.

  Chapter

  XI

  We marched down to the road. I loosened my sword in its scabbard. No way to know what we were walking into. But time was short.

  "Anyone asks, we're minstrels on our way to entertain the fairies," I said.

  It was our basic cover story. We'd been a huge hit with the Vikings. Also in some nameless peasant hole in the deep forest.

  But Hel had not been amused. Maybe our luck would be better with the fairies.

  We sauntered down looking as innocent as we could. At the same time we wanted to project a don't-mess-with-me look. It's a balancing act, Everworld is.

  Part of me hoped for a fight. A fight I could win, anyway. Jalil had covered for me. Shown no expression when I lied to the others.

  But that left me feeling like a fake.

  "Sheep coming up the road," Jalil said. "Let's hurry."

  "Why hurry?" Christopher asked.

  "You want to walk in front of the sheep or behind the sheep?"

  "Ah."

  We stepped up the pace and joined the road about fifty feet ahead of the first sheep. About the same distance behind a big oxcart loaded with what might be beets.

  The road was hard-packed dirt and crushed shell. Like a country road down South. Grass faded at the edges. Intermittent knots of shade trees near the road offered temporary respite from the sun.

  A stream, deep-cut and narrow, wound alongside the road.

  Reeds and cattails covered the banks.

  For a while all we saw were the sheep behind us and the back of the oxcart ahead of us. And little enough of either of those. Jalil's hurry to avoid sheep crap had overlooked one vital feet: An awful lot of flocks had already moved along this road. We mostly kept our eyes down, looking to avoid the bigger piles. I was wearing the last pair of running shoes I'd ever find in Everworld. They became unwearable it was lace-up boots I was lucky.