If you'd like to read the previous bits first, they are as follows:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, and 43.
And then comes this one.
Rolling home, using the key I'd forgotten I even had to
unlock the side door, riding up in the elevator, spending what
felt like half an hour convincing Serena that she had to sleep
outside in the bougainvillea rather than tucked up in bed with
me and El Brujo, muscling myself in and out of the shower before
crawling into bed and finally closing my eyes for the night, I
couldn't stop El Brujo's words from rattling around inside my
head like the little ball in a can of spray paint.
I mean, who was I to try bringing sense and stability into
someone else's life? Half-paralyzed, abandoned except for the
checks Dad sent every month to pay for my upkeep here at
Chrysalis House, my brain and nervous system either so tangled
that I could communicate with animals more easily than people,
or else so shredded that I simply imagined they were
talking to me, and here I was thinking I could be helpful!
"August," El Brujo's voice rumbled from the end of the bed.
"Don't grind your teeth so. It's quite disturbing."
Punching my pillow, I pushed my face into it. "This is
crazy, El Brujo. You know that, right?"
A shuffle of fur against the nylon cover of the unzipped
sleeping bag I use for a bedspread. "You'll need to be more
specific, I'm afraid," she said.
That got a little burst of a laugh out of me. "No, I'm
talking general. Everything, in fact, that's happened to me in
the six months since Donna brought you into the common room
downstairs, introduced you as Spooky, and said you were the new
therapy animal."
"You have an issue with the regimen I have prescribed in
you case?"
"I have an issue with you prescribing anything at all!"
"This seems an odd time to begin questioning my
credentials."
"It's not--!" I twisted around, glared at the darkness at
the foot of the bed, knew she was there even though I couldn't
see her. "No one else in the entire history of the human race
has ever been able to actually talk to animals! I mean, this
isn't a book or a TV show or anything! This is me, Gus Lancer,
a nobody if there ever was one! Why am I suddenly the
guy who gets magical powers??"
"Nothing here is magical, August. Your nervous system--"
"But that's crazy!" It's pretty much impossible to shout
in animal speech, but I was doing my darnedest. "For as long as
there's been people calling themselves scientists, they've been
studying you animals! And none of them--none of them--
ever found any sign anywhere that animals can so much as think!
And if you can't think, you can't talk!"
I could almost hear her smirk. "I can name more than a
dozen humans whose speeches would disprove that theory."
"I'm serious!" And I realized I was, my heart pounding, my
palms sweating, shivers rattling my whole body--or at least
those parts of my body that still could rattle. "Why is
this happening?? Why??"
El Brujo puffed a little sigh. "The constant refrain of
the human race. Mystery is so very anathema to you, you refuse
to allow even the tiniest bit of its darkness to shine into your
lives."
I stared, her voice seeming to come from everywhere around
me. "Darkness and light," she said quietly. "Inextricable,
they intertwine, each necessary to show the other. For shadows
cannot exist without the sun, nor can illumination unleavened
and undeterred bring more than blindness."
Blinking, I felt the night both fold open, vast and deep
and endless, and hold me close, warm and soft as El Brujo's fur.
"Perhaps," her voice went on, "you are to bring light out of the
darkness. Perhaps you are to cast a bit of shade across the
brow of one laboring through a blistering afternoon. Perhaps
you are to do both simultaneously or one after the other." A
damp nudge at my cheek, and everything collapsed into just me
and El Brujo back in my room, and I almost threw myself sideways
out onto the floor, almost pounded the call buzzer on the stand
beside my bed to summon whatever nurse might be on night duty.
But El Brujo stepping onto my chest kept me from doing any
of that. "Mostly, however, August," she said, settling against
me and purring, "you're meant to be both interested and
interesting, to enjoy your surroundings while also being
enjoyable to them. The give and take of existence, you see."
She pushed her head under my chin, reached her front paws around
my neck, and began kneading my pillow.
Almost by reflex, my arms came up, wrapped gently around
her, pure relaxation flooding me. "Thank you," I murmured, and
letting go whatever need I had for answers, I closed my eyes for
the night.
Act III of our five act melodrama concludes next with 45!
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