How the Stars did Fall Read online

  Chapter Seventeen

  As the most recent customers left her tent, Olivia got up and, stretching her limbs, became acutely aware of how exhausted she was. All day she had performed, over and over, stopping only to eat and use the bathroom. Once she took a peek at the line of people waiting to see her and she could not find where it ended as it snaked around the carnival, an ourobouros about to devour itself. Even now she was sure they must still be out there, waiting to be amazed like their friends had been. But, as thankful as she was for their money, Olivia wished they would go away. All she wanted was a warm bath and a soft bed to sleep on. So she pushed past the flaps of the tent separating her from Jason, determined to tell him she would not do another show that night even if he had to lie to the people outside that she had come down with some sickness.

  She found him hunched over his cluttered desk. Receipts with names and addresses and bank notes and coins littered the surface of the desk. Why he took this information Olivia could not understand. He had said something about the need to know your customers, but Olivia had retorted by reminding him that they would not be working in the carnival for long and he had pretended she had said nothing at all.

  “Where’d I put Mrs. Holloway’s address?” he said to himself while rummaging through his things.

  “Jason, I’m spent for the night. Can you call it off?”

  “Oh. Yes, I can. Wait. There is one more party.”

  “No, I can’t. I’m too tired and Molly must be too.”

  “You’ll want to see this party.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Just trust me.”

  “You better not be joshing me, Jason.”

  “No joshing at all. These people have come a long way to see you, perhaps the longest yet.”

  “Alright. The last one.”

  “Last one.”

  Olivia took her place at her table and sat waiting for this party to reach her. The dim candle lighting lent the whole space an aura of mystery as if new things could arise out of the corners of the tent at any moment. Now Olivia took the moment to consider how different the place looked compared to the day she had first started performing. For starters, the circular table upon which she did her trick had been covered in white silk and a large veil had been hung from the tarp above, the fabric separating the table from everything else in the tent. Beyond that, the boys had brought up several pieces of sandstone and placed them in random spots on the floor. But the most significant addition had been the map. A framed map of Atlantis painted by hand and signed by H.R. Mecklenburg himself. Jason had brought it in and, with no place to hang it, had set it down on the floor against the tent in such a way that it was the first thing anyone would see as they entered. Olivia worried that he had spent too much acquiring it but he said it had cost him nothing at all and that made Olivia worry even more. But she did not press the issue, trusting instead that Jason would not do anything stupid.

  Then Jason entered with the last party of the night and Olivia quickly got into character, closing her eyes and mumbling some esoteric-sounding words she had come upon in one of the tomes H.R. Mecklenburg had left behind. She remained in this way while Molly went through her spiel, until it was her turn to levitate the glass of water, which was actually more of a transparent goblet now, thick and as big as a man’s face. But before she lifted the goblet she opened her eyes for a moment, remembering what Jason had said before, that she would want to see these people, and standing there in front of her were two Indians she did not know, and in their midst a disheveled man with a scraggly beard and dirty clothes. She almost did not recognize him at first, but one look at his eyes and she remembered. Faraday, her brother.

  They embraced and brother and sister spent some time alone in that tent, telling each other about all of the events that preceded their reunion, giving particular attention to their powers, trying to find some common fact about how they had been acquired to perhaps ascertain what had caused them to appear. And Olivia showed her brother what it was she could do, holding all of the water present in the tent with her mind, then coalescing it all together until it hung in midair, flowing to and fro like some living being bereft of bones or any other underlying structuring force.

  “That’s much more impressive than what I can do,” Faraday said.

  “Show me,” Olivia said.

  He took her hands in his and, just as Adler had said, imparted upon her a vision of another plane of existence. One unconstrained by the limitations of the physical body. And in that other realm Faraday stood in a field and Olivia appeared before him and together they traveled in an instant to a time long past where that field was covered in snow and Olivia was only a babe. They went inside the house where a five-year-old Faraday sat holding baby Olivia in front of a fireplace, and he spoke to her as only a child could of those few things he understood to be important. Things his mother had told him and that he felt compelled by duty to pass onto his infant sister, such as the necessity of not spoiling his dinner by eating cake and not wandering far from the house and not getting too close to the fire and finally saying thank you whenever someone gave you something or assisted you in any way. Having seen this, they went back outside, where the snow fell in clumps, and Faraday took her back to her tent in the carnival.

  Olivia looked at her hands and her feet and at the tent above and the candles all around, and with her fingers she felt moisture beneath her eyes and she realized she had been crying.

  “Is that real?” she asked. “What I saw?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I don’t think it has ever snowed at Father’s farm.”

  “I don’t think it has either.”

  “Then how could it be real? Even if it is only partially real, your power is more useful than mine, at least out here. Far from the sea I am nothing more than a sideshow act.”

  “And near it you may as well be a god. Not a terrible trade-off.”

  “Someone else here has a gift, too, can you believe it? His name is Jason. You need to see what he can do.”

  They found Jason behind one of the carriages with a bucket of soap and water to his side, and a sponge in one hand.

  “Howdy,” Jason said.

  “Pleasure’s mine,” Faraday said.

  “What about the other brother?”

  “Half-brother. Where is Daniel? Is he not with you?” Olivia asked.

  “Daniel and I parted ways months ago. I can’t say I know where he is or what he’s up to, nor do I much care.”

  “Jason, I want you to show Faraday what it is you can do.”

  Hitching the dog’s leash to the carriage, Jason wiped his hands dry on a towel and took a close look at Faraday.

  “You sure?” He asked Olivia.

  “Yes.”

  “Fair enough. You got a pocket knife on you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Or something else small that you won’t miss?”

  Faraday put his hands in his pockets, searching for something that fit the description.

  “Nah, I don’t have anything like that.”

  “Wait here.”

  Jason climbed a set of steps and unlatched the carriage door, leaving it ajar while he went inside. Olivia knew that carriage belonged to the bearded lady of the carnival, a woman by the name of Haggis. And she could not help herself but to look inside through the gap. The candlelight was just strong enough to show the details of a vanity table complete with an oval mirror occupying the space immediately adjacent to the door. The table’s wooden legs looked hand-carved with very fine depictions of various kinds of animals. Lions and oxen and eagles. Beyond that she could see the foot of a bed adorned by similarly elaborate woodwork. Olivia could hear Jason speaking to someone, almost certainly Haggis, but she could not see them through the gap.

  Then she heard them raise their voices, as if an argument had broken out. Olivia believed Jason won, for Haggis had gotten up from wherever she had been and bent over, opening one of the drawers of t
he vanity and producing from it a brush with an ivory handle and pitch-black whiskers. And just as soon as she had handed it to Jason, she looked out through the doorway, giving Olivia a wink and a nod while Jason came out of the carriage. With a good slam, Haggis shut the door behind him.

  “Don’t mind her,” Jason said. “Just tired is all.”

  Then he took the brush and held it in both hands with reverence as if it had ceased to be a simple tool for brushing hair and had become sacred. Olivia knew what he was going to do with it, yet she could barely contain her anticipation for that moment of transformation. The moment where some invisible spark would travel through Jason and enter the object, imparting to it living energy. At least, that was how she imagined it must work, for how else could one describe the exchange but as a spark? An injection of energy in a form no one could detect with their eyes. And just as the exchange happened and the brush sprouted legs where before there was nothing but smooth ivory, one question occurred to Olivia. Where is the spark coming from? Jason was no god, so he could only be a conduit and the energy could only be coming from some other being or some other place. Perhaps moving through him like angels aflame, continuously ascending and descending Jason’s body from the top of his head down to the tips of his fingers, delivering unto the object which before had no life the gift of breath and being, leaving it no longer a tool or decoration but an embodiment of that singular will which presides over the universe and painstakingly crafts an infinite web of moves and countermoves which men call destiny and from which they wish they could be freed, believing themselves capable of diverging from it by the sheer force of their own will but finding over time that no matter the size of their effort they are doomed to fail over and over again.

  By now the brush had sprouted wings and it fluttered around Jason’s head and came to rest upon his hand again, two little eyes combing the vistas before it, darting to and fro.

  “Can you do that to anything?” Faraday asked.

  “I’ve tried doing it to a lot of things but the biggest thing it worked on was a table or an armoire or something like that. Didn’t work on anything larger.”

  Before the night was over, Faraday sat with Olivia and told her about Adler and everything he had said about the danger she was in. But Olivia refused to believe Lynch was evil.

  “Didn’t Adler save your life?” Faraday asked.

  “He did, but so did Lynch.”

  “Is he here now? In the carnival?”

  “No, but he is close by.”

  “Sister, I beg you. Come with me. We will go back to the farm. Pa and Ma need us.”

  “There are bigger problems in the world than our parent’s debt, Faraday. Lynch told me about Adler and others like him. Dugpas he called them. Corrupt sorcerers. Seductive spirits whose every thought is bent toward the seizing of power and authority over others.”

  “Then you have made your choice.”

  “I have.”

  Faraday gave her a hug and a kiss on the forehead before leaving.

  The next morning, Olivia took her breakfast alone inside the tent she worked in, taking big mouthfuls of bread and butter in between studying Mecklenburg’s old map of Atlantis. According to him, the city had existed somewhere to the west of Africa and had been sunken not by some great storm or earthquake but by the shifting of a gargantuan beast whose body lined the floor of the Atlantic. Olivia found it hard to believe that such a thing existed, but if it did how large would it have to be? Typical parameters applied to beasts could not be used here. In fact, the very mind of man struggles to imagine such a thing as it would have to be of a size comparable to the Earth itself and other celestial bodies and thusly escape the very categorization Mecklenburg wished to give it. And if there were a living thing of that size, could the planet itself not be a living thing—a mother pregnant with a son? Could not all planets be parents to other planets?

  Now the day proceeded without event for it was Sunday morning and the townspeople did not come to carnival on Sundays, preferring their chapels and their preachers’ sermons over dancing bears and the snap of whips. And rain came down on that day, pelting the tents and wetting the dirt, turning it into mud. Men and women ran for cover as the sudden moisture hit their hair and clothes, their shoes gathering a layer of sediment. All of this Olivia observed under the cover of her tent and then she retreated back inside and sat and played with a glass of water, separating the liquid into droplets and making them dance in the air to a song she hummed in her head. She did this because all of the moisture outside had begun to call to her. So much water, so close. While she imagined what really taking control would feel like, her hands drifted up as if preparing to take hold of something invisible and the only thing that kept her from doing so was the knowledge that her actions would level every tent and wagon in the area and probably kill a few people in the process. Then Jason burst into the tent all wet and angry and Olivia was thankful, for she immediately let her desires go and dropped her hands to her side.

  “What are you so irate about?” Olivia asked him.

  “Haven’t you heard? We’re to pack up and move out. Orders from Lynch.”

  To pass the time, Olivia brought out an old chest of Mecklenburg’s she had found and proceeded to look over each item inside one at a time. It was less a chest and more a sarcophagus. It had taken three men to place it where it was, hidden behind the veil where she worked. Jason watched her while she excavated.

  “That painting over there, the one with Atlantis on it, did you get it from Mecklenburg’s things?” Olivia asked him.

  “No. I mean, yeah, it was his, but I didn’t take it. He gave it to me before he left.”

  “Did you know there are more?” Olivia said, and setting aside a bunch of dusty tomes and rolled-up scrolls, she lifted from the chest a pair of framed paintings. The first had pictured on it the figure of a man wreathed in shadow, riding some sacred shape. Two pyramids, interlocking, with gears upon gears and wheels upon wheels, propelling the being that rode it forward into space. The second far less obscure. It depicted a man, but this one in full detail. Olivia could not mistake that bearded face and knew the man to be Lynch.

  Turning it over, Olivia found and read aloud the inscription:

  “Dedicated to His Highness and Most Exquisite Lord Chogthan of the Tenth Star, Holder of the Huiron Key, Defender of the White Flame of Taurus and Guardian of the Blue Expanse”

  Outside the tent, Jason waited for her at the head of a cart, holding on to the reins of a horse. On the cart something moved beneath a pair of thick fur blankets. Out of curiosity, Olivia moved closer to whatever it was while Jason pulled the blankets aside, revealing an Indian woman all tied up, blindfolded and gagged.

  “Is that the Indian that came here with my brother?” Olivia asked.

  Jason nodded. “Your brother has hidden things from you, Olivia. This Indian holds the key to the doors we wish to unlock.”

  With a marked map Lynch had given him, Jason rode out. Olivia clung to him on the same horse and behind them, pulled by the strength of the animal, Moon looked on, gagged but no longer blindfolded, and she did nothing but stare at her captors all through that morning and into the evening, as the sky reddened as if covered in bloody molasses, the nectar dripping from the coffers of the gods above. At night, Olivia pulled the gag down and fed Moon a tin of heated beans. Olivia waited for the Indian to say something, to protest, but she only ate in silence without so much as a grimace or frown or any other sign of consternation. So Olivia put the gag back in place, tightening it a bit, and left Moon propped against a tree, finding a seat next to Jason opposite the fire he had started. He had a smooth gray pebble in his hand, and it moved and had the makings of a head jutting out like some inorganic turtle of Jason’s own authorship, and with each instance of Olivia observing this impartation of life she further doubted her original hypothesis that there was a god acting through Jason and rather had begun to believe he could, after all, be some kind of god himself. Be
cause, she thought, she had never before known a god and perhaps this was what one looked like, and further, if he was a god, then so was she. A mighty goddess of the sea.

  “You should name him,” Olivia said.

  “Not a him,” Jason said.

  “Then name her.”

  “Not a her either. What’s a name that works for both boys and girls?”

  “Hmm. How about Saturn or Jupiter?”

  “Jupiter. I’ll call it Jupiter.”

  Now Jupiter had taken a liking to Olivia and, traveling from Jason’s arm to hers, it climbed up to her neck and then to the top of her head. From that perch it surveyed the darkness and the fire, its little stone heart being filled with the wonder of the world.

  “It likes you,” Jason said.

  The pair of them locked eyes for a moment and after sharing an unspoken truth, that Jupiter was not the only one that liked her, Olivia soon found that her hand had been covered up by Jason’s own hand. She subtly removed her hand from under his and gave Jason a peck on the cheek.

  “I’m so tired,” she said, turning over and lying down, hoping Jason would do the same. And he did.

  That night Olivia dreamt intensely of a wide field with no trees or animals, just endless grass in all directions interrupted only by the red heads of the amanita muscaria growing out of the soil. The mushrooms were arrayed in a single column, marking with their flesh a path forward down the field, leading up to something shimmering in the horizon. Olivia trotted forward, trying all the way to discern what it was that waited for her ahead. And to her surprise she discovered what it was before coming in close enough to see it. Olivia could feel that it was water, could even picture in her mind its rectangular shape and something else too, as if the molecules were different from the water of the earth and they reacted to her probing mind differently too. They resisted her sway. Finally she came right up to it and saw that it was a kind of water door and that she could see right through it. The image behind the water door was somewhat blurred but it looked like the inner court of some regal palace, and at the far end she saw an empty throne and an altar beset by unlit candles.