Luminous Part 10

"Do you?" Tender sounded so eager. She leaned her elbows against her knees.

"Maybe," she said. "What if I did?"

Tender stretched, long-limbed and content. "Then you're somebody that I was hoping to find one day-someone here who understands."

Consuela felt the Flow shift unexpectedly beneath her-a silky and sinister, slippery thing. She felt like she could get easily sucked under if she wasn't careful. Was that the nature of the Flow? Or Tender?

"Someone who understands what you're saying?" she asked. "Or someone who understands you?"

Tender gave another winning smile, boyishly handsome under his featherlight hair. Only his thick, black eyebrows made him look devilish. Wickedly amused.

"What's the difference, really? Who am I beyond what I say that I am? Not to be overly philosophical, but here-especially here-what you say is who you are. My words, my beliefs, are all that I have." Tender shrugged. "Of course, I have to be willing to back them up with action or it's all just hollow propaganda. If I cease to be reliable, I cease to be. In a world where we literally cause things to happen"-he rapped the chair's armrest-"I better mean what I say. After we die, what's left, really?" He gestured to her body. "Not even bones, I'm afraid. The only thing left is the memory of us-what we've left behind, what we've done, and how we're remembered. That is the mark of a life well lived, one that is remembered after it has pa.s.sed. Our words, our actions, are our epitaph."

Consuela shook her head. Who uses words like "epitaph"? Although their conversation was interesting, it was smothering, pressing down on her; she didn't know how to contribute or how to get out.

Tender took pity on her by shifting gears. "Listen, Bones, not many will speak of death here in the Flow. I think the others believe that they can cheat death if they stay." Consuela self-consciously hugged her limbs tighter. "They create pecking orders or a higher society or whatever it is to convince themselves otherwise, but it's all the same," he confided. "They're hiding. I'm not."

He squeezed the ends of his armrests and grinned. "I'm content with death, but that's because I choose to live fully-with maximum impact-doing what I need to do right here. Right now." He stabbed the wood with his forefinger. His voice carried his pa.s.sion and contempt in equal amounts. Consuela only listened with half an ear. Most of her was itching to leave.

Tender gestured contemptuously to the great beyond, waving off eddies and billows of Flow. "They are all caught up in why we're here and what does it mean. I say, who cares? This is the highest calling, no matter who spent the quarter to dial me up. This is our second chance and I'm going to milk it for all it's worth." He looked at her over a fist near his chin. "And, I suspect, you're the very same way."

They had a stretched-moment staring contest. Consuela, having no eyes, won.

"You're not scared, are you, Bones?"

Consuela wanted to say yes, that she wasn't scared of her power, but she was scared of death, that she wasn't scared of being in between, but she was scared of not getting home, and that she wasn't scared of him, exactly, but that she was a little scared of everyone she'd met in the Flow. She was scared of the Flow. She didn't like being here. She hated feeling frightened and confused, hated not knowing where to place her faith when the only people she knew were phantoms and the world around them was an uncertain, unreal place. She hated knowing that she could be whisked away at any moment by an unseen force that could pluck her up and spit her out anytime, anywhere. She wanted to be in control of herself, and she wanted to go home, and she wanted someone to tell her that it would all be okay.

What she said was "No."

"Well then," Tender said, standing up, the Flow dispersing around him and the chair unmaking itself into mist. "That's all I wanted to say. To introduce myself, let you know a little about me, and what I am all about since we're going to be together for some time. And that there's more to me than my role in the Flow, despite what the others may think." The way he said it, it was clear he'd meant Sissy. Sissy, Wish, and V. Consuela bristled, wondering if she'd be on that list, unsure of where her loyalties lay or why she had to choose sides at all.

Tender twitched his hair off his thick eyebrows. "Thanks for taking the time."

"No problem," Consuela said as she got to her feet, her own chair dissolving only after she'd left it. She wobbled on the lip of raw Flow, fighting the urge to run. The whole conversation had left her dizzy and confused. She was glad to have it end.

Tender waved a hole through the universe, leading them into a strange, null s.p.a.ce-a tiny closet without walls. It felt small, enclosed, and Consuela pressed against him unexpectedly. His smile faltered and he pushed to one side; the s.p.a.ce swung wide like a door. Tender held it politely as Consuela stepped onto the crosswalk of an empty city street of clean asphalt and tinted gla.s.s.

"Next time, come with me and I'll show you more," he said. "Nice meeting you, Bones." He grinned wolfishly and waved the Flow into folds, swallowing itself and him with it.

After a long moment, Consuela shook herself from skull to toes, rattling what was inside her, as if checking to make certain that it was all still there.

SHE ran. Consuela tried to outpace her thoughts and her fears of the churning oblivion and its clever puppetmaster. She thought of Sissy and V, but she wanted to be comforted by someone uninvolved, someone outside the Flow. She wanted to talk to Allison. Mom. Dad. Anyone real. She wanted to go home. She wanted to get away.

She flew through the world, unable to hold a solid picture in her mind of where she wanted, what she wanted, so she kept racing through flip pages of s.p.a.ce. She dove through the Flow and into fog, the difference measured only by the thinness of the air and the heavy scent of wet nettles.

Gasping, she stopped. It was a misty-morning backyard grove, the white fog curled thickly around a candy-striped metal swing set and a three-season porch. Consuela swallowed, hearing her own sounds too loudly. Her breathing puffed in the air. Dewdrops wet her edges.

Exposed, she was suddenly too scared to move. She tried holding her breath, but it made her head swim. Shifting slowly in the gra.s.s, hearing every crackle and break, Consuela tried to make out the shadowy shapes in the mist.

She froze.

Someone stood on the edge of the hosta. The fog rolled and unfurled around a round, pale girl with dark, lazy eyes and limp black hair. She was the shape of a nesting doll, hunched and half awake, all but obscured in bluish-gray mist. She set Consuela's instincts on edge.

Consuela wanted to run. She knew she mustn't run.

Mustn't move.

Mustn't make a sound.

Winding tendrils played through her ribs. Moments ticked by, full of questions, while Consuela waited, trembling, uncertain whether she was predator or prey.

The girl's nostrils flared, painting swirls in the mist. Squinting her puffy eyes, she laboriously turned and ambled off into the trees. The snap and crunch of footsteps disappeared between a fourth step and a fifth.

Consuela started breathing at what would have been the eleventh step.

She rushed forward, the ground-dwelling clouds scattering, extending her senses to find her way out before the person in the mist came back. She wanted to feel safe-the feeling of home-and she ran for the next best thing.

Her bedroom door closed behind her before she even registered the k.n.o.b under her hand and she tumbled into the comfort of her own soft bed. She hugged the pillows against her smooth surfaces and clawed her fingers deep into down. It smelled of home and she breathed it in deep, trying to fill that s.p.a.ce inside her that had emptied ever since she'd learned that she was nowhere near her real home.

Consuela stood up and threw back the curtains, opening the window to let in the sunlight and the last of a half-remembered breeze. Home. She held the idea like spun gla.s.s. This was where she'd last felt safe. This is where she belonged.

She sat heavily on her bed and fell back against the covers.

Sprawled on her back, feet dangling on the floor, Consuela eyed the cracks in the ceiling, remembering Quantum's walls. It was all connected. They were all connected. She saw the tiny light being pushed by Abacus in her mind's eye and thought about what V had said, and Tender, too: she hadn't died. She could still get home. All she needed to do was find the way back from one side of the constellation to the next, the path that connected the dots from the Flow back into the world.

She knew what she needed to do, but not how to do it.

Consuela felt, rather than saw, the minuscule brush of fluff. Sitting up, she moved her foot aside and saw a single feather caught in the carpet. She picked it up, twirling it slowly between her finger bones. It was stiff and black, but when it caught the sun, a bright band of greenish blue sheared its surface, a crisp prism of negative light.

It must be one of Joseph Crow's.

Spinning the stiff quill in her fingers, Consuela wondered if he needed it back, if it would transform into a finger or something, or whether he molted feathers like people shed dead skin cells.

She used to examine feathers under her plastic microscope when she was little and Dad wanted her to be a microbiologist. He said he'd wanted to give her the world, down to the littlest things. She used to play with her dollhouse for hours: little tables, little chairs, little books, little lamps, little baskets of bread. Still, nothing man-made was quite like a feather. Nature's symmetry was like a puzzle and Consuela loved the minutiae of detail.

Consuela admired the feather's simple precision and wished that she could pluck the barbs apart and count them, one by one. Try to peek inside and figure out its secret. It was a secret she was looking for, the secret to the Flow. If she could just figure it out, she could find her way home.

She ran the feather along her wrist and watched it ripple and re-form.

She lost the moment when fascination became compulsion.

It flittered in.

Her left hand lifted of its own accord and plucked another feather right out of the air. Consuela was surprised to find it there. She reached up and grabbed another-this time watching as it wafted in on a lazy pillow of air. She plucked another, and another, flicking her wrist just so, clicking her thumb and forefinger together like chopsticks catching flies. The universe answered her will.

Five blue-black feathers had fastened to her fingertips, extending outward in an exotic fan. She unfurled her fingers, watching the mirage of motion, a dark hummingbird dance.

And Consuela knew.

Placing a finger against the back of her wrist, she traced a line up her arm. A flurry of feathers materialized, whirling out of the world, filing through her window to follow her lead. A sound like the shuffle of cards filled her room under the sudden torrent of pinfeathers, breast feathers, contours, and down. They funneled in from everywhere-lining up like keyboard keys wherever she trailed one finger, then the other, drawing herself tattoo lines of wings and skin.

Blue-green-black and shiny as oil, soft as fluff and paper stiff; her skin whispered with the beat of wings and hollow bones.

Yes. She thought, Beneath it all, we're just bones.

The world snapped open.

The world snapped shut.

Consuela bunched her legs beneath her and lifted her ruffled chin. Eyes upcast, she unfolded her magnificent wings and flew.

THE woman stumbled through the field, weaving in and out of cornstalks as if they were strangers at a bar. Her hair was a curtain of dirt blond and dirt. Her knees were muddy; she'd fallen more than once.

The gla.s.s bottle in her hand was her counterweight. Its caramel-colored contents sloshed, swinging her from one furrowed ditch to the next. Dead, choppy stalks cracked underfoot, and her shoes sucked mud like a whiskeyed kiss.

She tripped. It was the final fall. She knew it before she hit the ground.

Her cheek slapped hard, registering "cold" and "wet" as the mud pressed against her eyelid and plugged her left nostril. She tried to sit up, but thought that, perhaps, she was ready to reenter the earth once again.

Instincts thought otherwise. The woman coughed into a puddle, gagging and sputtering against the taste of silt. She tried to catch her breath, but the soft earth rushed into her nose and mouth.

Her coughing became bubbles. Consciousness winked fireflies. If she closed her eyes, it would be for the last time.

Consuela plucked her up like a hawk.

The thin woman weighed nothing, as if she were made of silk scarves. Consuela climbed with her quarry caught in taloned feet. Four beats like a wild heart, each chamber getting its due, and they soared past the face of a waning moon.

The smell penetrated Consuela's head with twin scents of sick and self-loathing. She climbed higher, shaking these things loose in the whipping wind. Her mad rattling revived the woman, somewhat. The older woman wiped at her face, smearing brown filth across her nose and cheek while still clutching the bottle. Consuela frowned and squeezed the woman's shoulder. The hand jerked. Gla.s.s shattered fantastically on the asphalt below.

A series of quick, fanning thrums lifted them higher, where the air was cleaner and cold. Death faded behind them like old perfume. The woman laughed in delight and slurred something coherent.

"I'm alive!"

Only then did Consuela permit them to sink into the warmer currents rippling up from the earth.

Perhaps she was supposed to feel omnipotent or benevolent or some otherworldly, compa.s.sionate thing, but all Consuela felt was an odd mix of disgust, a sort of parental worry, and relief that she'd made it in time. She wanted to tuck this woman in a safe place to heal, nested and comfortable and far away from here. Consuela caught a flat image of a battered orange hideaway bed seen through broken blinds, plastic flamingos, and a tangle of half-dead purple begonias.

Home, she thought, although certainly not her own. Safe. Consuela's thoughts were animalistic and pure. She adjusted her pincer grip and banked into the east. A trailer park reeled into focus, speeding under her charge's dangling, mud-encrusted shoes.

The woman looked up.

"Angel!" she crooned.

Hardly, thought Consuela as she dropped her burden unceremoniously onto a bare patch of lawn to sleep it off.

"ANGEL!" Consuela crooned as she and Sissy broke out laughing.

"To be fair, what did you expect her to say?" Sissy asked. "I mean, just look at you!" The Watcher gestured with both hands. "Show me those wings!"

Consuela tried, but they wouldn't fit. Folded inside Sissy's bas.e.m.e.nt office, she realized how impressive she must look. V was still out on a.s.signment and she crackled with unspent energy. It made her giddy. She didn't want to be alone. And she wanted to show off her skin.

"Sorry, can't," Consuela said, shrugging. "I didn't realize that she could see me."

"Usually they don't," Sissy said. "Or, at least, if they do, they don't tell. But I've long suspected that behind every angel sighting, fairy sighting, Elvis sighting, or alien abduction is just one of us doing our job." She ran a hand over the flutter of Consuela's elongated humerus bone. Consuela felt every feather bend and spring back. "You must have, like, a twenty-foot wingspan," Sissy murmured, walking behind Consuela like a dressmaker. "How can your arms bend like that?"

"The same way you can remove your eyeb.a.l.l.s," Consuela said.

"Fair enough."

Consuela rippled her arms in a shiver of joy remembered. "I could fly with these things-I flew!"

Sissy poked her in the bicep. "You've flown before," she said. "Remember Rodriguez in the park?"

"That wasn't the same." Consuela struggled to recall. It was hard to think back to when she'd stopped living in the moment. "That was more like standing on a moving sidewalk or skating on ice. Not much effort involved," she said, brightening with renewed laughter. "But, boy are my arms TIRED!"

Both laughed so hard, Sissy had tears on her cheeks.

"Wait, wait, wait-this deserves a toast!" Sissy ducked under one enormous wing and bounced toward a built-in bookcase in the corner. She removed a giant leather-bound edition of the Webster's Dictionary and flipped it open, revealing stiff pages that had been glued together and a wide bottle hidden inside. Sissy winked.

"Once Dad realized that we could look up everything online, I think he decided to put this to good use." She lifted the heavy bottle and plopped the hollowed-out tome on the desk. "The best part is, in accordance with the Flow, this thing literally never runs dry." She spun the top off with a practiced twist and lifted it high. "To Bones: the Flow's fluffiest angel!"

"You're kidding me," Consuela said uncertainly. The smell of whiskey and puke still clung inside her nose, yet Consuela was intrigued. "You've got everlasting Scotch?"

"Nineteen forty-six Macallan. Read it and weep," Sissy said, offering the bottle until she realized Consuela was without hands. "You want me to pour you a bowl or something?"

"No," Consuela said. "Let me take it off . . ." Not quite sure what to expect, she kneaded the back of her neck with the k.n.o.bs of her thumbs, and feeling the telltale loosening and kiss of air, she shrugged her shoulders and shot her arms outward-the feather skin collapsed with a dramatic flump onto the floor.

"Wow!" Sissy cried. "Burlesque!" She handed over the bottle. "Here."

Consuela sniffed the liquor with her senses cleared, not knowing if her body could eat or drink. The liquor's perfume penetrated through the roof of her palate and danced in her sinus caves. The smell-earthy and vibrant-whispered in a voice that could carry across a crowded room. It smelled familiar, a warm presence of pipe smoke and old wood.

"This was your father's," Consuela said wondrously. Sissy smiled with nostalgic pride. Consuela watched the liquid play catch-can with slivers of bronze-gold light. "My father didn't like to drink," she said, "but he loved his cigars."

Consuela inhaled, trying to catch a whiff of memory; that wonderful mix of scratchy, cherry-rich tobacco smoke. Her hand moved to touch the topaz cross that was not at her throat. It was back with her skin and clothes. She let her hand fall.

She called me "angel." Consuela mused happily to herself. Mom and Dad would be proud.

"To angels," she said, and drank. It felt elegant and numbed like fire.

"To angels!" Sissy crooned in mock worship.

"To you." Consuela tipped and swallowed. "And me."

They spent the rest of the night sipping phantom Scotch, tying spare bedsheets around their wrists and taking turns jumping off of the stately chair, spinning and leaping and playing at being angels until they wound, tumbling, down.