![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
binaryalchemistYou turn it into a book project.
Okay...before you rip it apart--this isn't here for critique. Trust me, I have a beta and she's a killer. She's also been nagging me non stop to get the goddamned book in motion. There have been a few false starts--this may be one of them. I'm throwing this chapter out simply because one MUST START SOMEWHERE. It will most likely be torn up or thrown away...but let me at least give this another shot.
Let me introduce you to some characters who are very, very dear to me....and yes...PARTS of this are true.
THE HOUSE OF FLYING TABLES
CHAPTER 1: SAINTS AND SEELIES
When I was just about six I learned the difference between the Real World and Weird Shit.
It’s kind of a strange story. Let me explain…
There’s these things I call seelie bugs. I didn’t make them up. They’re real. My brother couldn’t see them. My border collie sure as hell did. They aren’t bugs and they aren’t human and I think they liked to mess with the dog just for shits and giggles.
Rufus would race across the yard, tongue flapping ,eyes wide, until he’d collide with something that….well, it was a lot like an invisible foot had shot out into the dog’s path. There’d be a yipe! and a tangle of legs and down he’d go. Didn’t hurt him, but he’d sort of go all hang-doggy, tail drooping and head low as he crawled under Dad’s station wagon. “What a spazz!” my brother would chuckle. “Stupid mutt.” But from underneath the rear bumper a pair of big brown eyes would capture my own and there was a soft, pitiful whine. Tell him, Rufus seemed to be saying. You can see Them. They think it’s funny.
Well, I tried. But my brother’s head was full of softball statistics and bits of model airplanes and Cub Scouts. He didn’t have any spare corners in his awareness where seelie bugs could fit in. My head was a good deal emptier, maybe. I saw faces in clouds, monsters under my bed, and ugly little seelie bugs dive bombing Rufus and then riding off on the backs of lightning bugs just before the moon came up over the pine trees.
I though I’d made that word up when I was five. Seelie—like, you know, smelly or touchy-feely. Didn’t know that the word already existed or what a significance it would hold in my family. On impulse I checked Britannica when I was in grade school to see if such a word existed. It did, and I changed the spelling once the hair of the back of my neck stopped standing on end.
Seelie means sacred, and is best known as a reference to the Court of Benevolent Fairy Folk. Trust me, being benevolent doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally knock back a few drinks and torment the family pooch. Benevolent means they won’t kill you for fun. Seelie bugs were those tiny spirits that come out around dusk and drive small animals and children up the wall, although if you’re an adult the bugs are more inclined to steal odd socks from the dryer or, in my case, poke you in the corner of your eye so you’ll drop a contact lens.
So the seelie bugs were messing with my mutt and making the glass eyes of my bride doll blink in the creepiest manner imaginable. They also were the evil little bastards that used to hide under the bed and pinch my bare feet when I got up in the night to go potty, making me think that there were skeletons hiding under there that were going to eat my toes off. Anyway, I wanted them gone. Mom had a can of stuff under the sink that said “Kills Bugs DEAD”., but it smelled awful and Mom paddled me good when she saw me swipe it. We had a fly swatter but it was kind of rusty and gross, crusted with bits of legs and wings and such. I didn’t want to touch it, much less hide it under the pillow until the bugs went after me again. So I developed a cast iron bladder so I could avoid crawling out of bed in the middle of the night, and our poor dog had to be plied with filched handfuls of Cheerios as an apology for letting the bugs yank his tail, flip his ears inside out and pee in his water bowl.
I hated seelie bugs. That changed after Mom hit the Buick on Hwy 119 on the way home from seeing Santa Claus at Sears.
Nobody wore seatbelts back then. I don’t think the station wagon even had them. I was all the way in the ‘back-back’, my head pillowed on my car coat and mouthing a stick of peppermint candy I’d gotten as a treat after sitting on some old geezer’s lap and smelling the onions on his breath while insisting that Mom wouldn’t get real mad if he brought me a live dinosaur for Christmas. I was a little carsick so I stretched out and drowsed and sucked on my candy cane.
I felt the impact before I heard it, and it was like being shot out of a catapult. My little body became just another projectile and the moments seemed frozen as I arrowed straight for the windshield, head first.
What I hit instead was neither soft nor hard but it smelled like a night of rain. My head snapped down and I took the brunt of the impact across the tops of my shoulders and the back of my neck just before something very brilliant burned behind my eyes and I dropped like a rag doll across my brother’s lap, the blood from his broken nose dripping down my chin and neck.
What happened next…it’s kind of hazy. The world was fuzzy and smelled like chemicals and there were people who had me strapped to some kind of board and telling me to lie still—no, don’t try to lift your head, sweetie—and there was a sharp burning in my arm as they taped down the IV and waited for the morphine or whatever to take effect, only they’d given me a tad too much. I couldn’t swallow my own spit and I couldn’t shape the words to yell for help. I started feeling numb and sound started to echo and fade. There was a loud cracking sound, and I was spinning wildly, tumbling off the gurney and landing on my knees.
The floor should have been cold. I’d have noticed that, I think, and my knees should have been at least bruised. I stood up, brushed myself off and was relieved that my neck didn’t hurt anymore.
I wandered through the doors and headed towards the waiting room, but when I passed the triage area I saw my brother Andrew getting his nose bandaged. He wasn’t cooperating. He kept yelling where’s my sister? Where’s Dee-Dee.
Should have realized at that particular moment that I was already dead, otherwise I’d have kicked him in the shins for calling me Dee-Dee. Short for the improbable Irish name I got saddled with by my godfather: Diabeanachte. My Dad, a lapsed Catholic who nonetheless kept all his options open, thought that the name was ‘a puddle of pagan shite’ and called me Deidre—a good Irish name, he reckoned. Right, Dad. A good Irish name that means ‘sorrows’, whereas my godfather’s name meant ‘gift of the Goddess’. Either name would have gotten me beaten up in the schoolyard so I answered to Dia, which was strange enough in our neighborhood.
“Don’t call me Dee-Dee, Snotnose!” I hollered at him, answering back with a pet name of my own. He didn’t even blink, and normally he’d have been off that table in a heart beat and chasing me around it, snatching at my flying pigtails every step of the chase. Weird.
I thought I could hear my mom crying and found myself stumbling down a series of white corridors that seemed to move in the oddest directions—I believe I was walking upside down a few times—and then I found myself blundering to a gate of cold black iron. Behind it was the most incredible—look, I know you’ve seen gardens, nice ones, right? So have I. Seen some incredible sights over the years. Rain forests, mesas, savannahs and alps and tiny trickles over pebbles right in my own back yard. Nothing else came close, then or now. Have you ever seen a rose so lush you just wanted to press your face right into the heart of that velvety softness and fragrance? I could taste the flowers, if that makes sense. Every leaf and petal had a edge that caught the light like a facet on a priceless gem. My toes itched; I wanted to run through that cool damp grass. I wanted to swing myself up in those inviting branches and look for bird’s nests and pretty beetles and cram handfuls of sun-warmed berries into my mouth.
I was about to pull the gate open when I hear a soft moan coming from the heart of the rose garden. Soon as my eyes followed the sound the fragrance began to sicken me.
There was a man bound to a massive oak tree in a circle of rose bushes. Not precisely crucified, but bound with braided golden ropes as thick as my wrist with his hands above his head and his toes barely touching the roots, half-suspended between heaven and earth, if Earth it was. The roses had been trained to wrap themselves around his wasted body and the tree’s broad trunk. Every time his chest lifted with an indrawn breath beads of crimson appeared on his pale skin. He was naked and beautiful and utterly miserable when he saw me staring at him. “Get out of here. Run while you can…for the Sun’s love, run!” A sharp wooden spear jabbed playfully at his belly, making him groan. Three or four very ugly, very hairy little men were poking at the captive, yanking on his ropes, playfully flicking braided whips at his bare thighs and feet and poking him with sticks.
“You’re hurting him!” I cried.
They laughed at that. “It’s our job,” they answered cheerily. “We’re good at it.”
I begged them to stop. Meanwhile, the hanged man was shouting for me to get the hell out of there, screaming himself hoarse. I can’t tell you why, but as soon as I heard his cries rescuing him became the single most important thing in the world.
The gate was pretty ornate. My feet were pretty small and what the hell, I was already dead, right? No harm trying. I started to crawl up the curlicues when when…and this is the hardest part to describe…I got yanked. Imagine one of those paddle-ball toys. Imagine being the ball when it reaches the end of the rubber band and is pulled back to strike the paddle again. That’s what it felt like. A sharp jerk through my middle just as I was about to swing my leg over the top of the gate. I was flying backwards at high velocity and the whiteness was closing in on me, the cries of the tortured man fading into the distance.
I landed with a whump! and a flap of wind near the nurse’s station outside the ICU where my father was arguing with someone on the phone, the nurses trying to shush him so he wouldn’t disturb the other families.
“No. Thank you. We’ll….let you know. They are going to take her down to surgery in a few minutes. There is no sense booking a flight until…you know. So…” His voice trailed off and he lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “There’s not much they can…you know. Right. I’ll have someone call you, Tam. Good night.” He hung up and scrubbed his face wearily. “Christ, I need a cigarette. When do you think…?” He jerked his head towards the room with Brennan/D, Dr. Givens NPO scribbled on the marker board attached to the wall beside the door. “I don’t want to leave her.”
The nurse glanced at a chart. “Dr. Given and Dr. Vandervliet are going over the xrays. They may do a few more pictures before taking her in. Go on,” she nodded. “Smoking area right outside. I’ll send someone to you when they come out of consultation or if we need you.”
Dad nodded. “My wife?”
“She just went down to the ER to sign your son out so he can leave with his aunt. Other than a broken nose he’s fine.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
I could have touched him. I was close enough to smell his Old Spice but he walked right through me. That made me decide being dead wasn’t such a good idea, so I padded noiselessly over to the open door and stared at…
It. That…thing in the bed. Head shaved, strapped to a board, gray faced and barely breathing. I poked it with my finger. It didn’t respond. I pinched it. Nothing.
Damn. How the hell was I going to get back in there? Wasn’t as easy as Peter Pan getting his Shadow back, although if I’d seen a bar of soap I’d have tried his trick to stick myself to the body’s feet. Maybe I needed to be sewn to the body like Peter did, but nobody else could see me much less attach me. I went back over to the nurses’ station and tried to raise enough of a ruckus that somebody—anybody—would pay attention to me. I couldn’t so much as flutter the pages on my own chart.
That’s when I found out you could throw a tantrum without a body. If I had had tear ducts or a voice to yell with my face would have been drenched and ears would have been ringing for five city blocks. I crouched down on the floor I could not feel, hugged my knees to my chest and just howled.
“You’re hurting my ears.”
My head jerked. Somebody was standing beside the body. He didn’t come in through the door. One minute the chair my father had been sitting in was empty and then it was not.
He had his back to me but I recognized the greatcoat and the russet hair poking out messily around the collar as if it had been thrown on in haste. “Tim-Tam??” He was damp and smelled of rain on a summer night, which was odd considering it was December and snowing outside. “H-how’d you know I was here?”
“I had hoped you wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.” The voice sounded exhausted. “Come ‘round so I can see you properly.”
I climbed shakily to my feet and joined him beside the bed. “I wanna go back but I can’t get in,” I gestured towards my unconscious form.
“You weren’t meant to.” The firm mouth tightened and a gloved finger slipped under his glasses to wipe away a drop of moisture that threatened to slip down his cheek. “Your father told me to wait for news. If I’d have waited….” His voice trailed off. He reached for my hand and I could just barely feel him and it was weird that he was somehow more solid than the floor beneath my feet even though he’d appeared out from nowhere. “I always tell the truth to you, don’t I?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right, then.” His other hand curled around the fingers of my motionless body. “Get up there.”
“But---“
“Do it.”
“I—“
“I always tell you the truth, don’t I?” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Do what I tell you.”
It wasn’t hard. I climbed up onto my own flesh and lay down. There was a slight tingling but no more sensation than that. He settled me a little, positioning me just so. Odd, but in the light I couldn’t help noticing that his eyes were the same color as that whiskey my father liked so much and then I began to worry about Dad. “Does Dad know you’re—“
“Don’t think about him or anything else. Believe me, they’re better off than you are right now.”
Thinking again of Peter Pan, I asked, “Are you gonna stick me to my body?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “It’s going to hurt.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I mean it.” He never looked so serious before. “You’re going to want me to stop but I won’t be able to once we begin.”
With a child’s honesty I asked, “I’m not supposed to come back, am I?”
He reached through me and softly touched my cold cheek. “This wasn’t an accident. There are forms which must be addressed, rules that…never mind. There may be a war on,” he leaned in closer and touched his lips to my forehead, “ but my loved once are not collateral damage.”
“Are you mad?” In the brief years of my life I’d never seen my uncle look so furious. Tammerlane Smith was a cheery, mild mannered eccentric, generous to a fault and if he ever had a nickel in his pocket he’d have spent it on someone else. Dad didn’t like Tim-Tam and always used big words to describe him that were not found in my grammar school Thorndike-Barnhart dictionary. Mom would usually shush him but it was pretty obvious she didn’t always approve of her brother. But to me, he was Tim-Tam—my Tim-Tam. We loved each other fabulously and forever and he promised me on my fifth birthday that he’d never lie to me and he’d always be there if I needed him. A part of me knew deep down inside that he wouldn’t let me die if he had to drag me down from heaven with his bare hands.
The tip of his nose brushed mine. Pixie kisses we called them. “Never at you, little one. Now be still and let me get this done.”
He pulled what looked like an old tobacco pouch out of his pocket. Something shriveled and brown was held between two fingers that slipped inside the folds of his shirt. He grunted softly as if something hurt him, and when he pulled out his hand there were smears of blood on his fingertips. Reaching into the bag again he drew out ten smooth, grey pebbles about the size of his thumb. Grasping each one between his bloody fingers, he turned them over and over, one at a time, muttering in an odd language as if giving instructions.
He laid the first stone beneath my feet. ‘Malkut. Walk firmly upon the earth.”
The second just above my immature womb. “Yesod. Waters of the deep mysteries flow within you.”
The third and fourth were placed on my hip bones. “Hod, genius and creativity. Netzach which is Beauty. Awaken in her.”
The fifth rested on my solar plexus. “Tifaret. Restore and revive.”
The sixth and seventh approximated the position of my kidneys. “Gevurah guide and discipline when needed. Guide her feet to the straight path. Chessed, bless that road and bring help when needed. May Fortune favor this one.”
Stones eight and nine were positioned on my shoulders. “Binah, dark mother, enfold her. Chochma, bright father, embrace her.”
He laid his hand lightly over my throat, lips and forehead. “Daath. The leap of faith. Do you believe me, Dia?”
The lips moved. “…..yes….”
“Then follow me as I open the door….NOW!” The tenth stone, laid on the pillow just above my naked head, began to smolder the pillow. A bolt of white energy shot from that stone downwards in a jagged path to my feet, hitting each stone in turn and leaving a track of light behind its path.
There was a loud crack and the worst goddamn pain I’ve ever felt in all my life. It felt like somebody had run boiling lava in my veins and something inside my head burst.
Then I was looking up at my Tim-Tam through eyes that could blink and tear. His sharpish features were flushed and his face was wet, but he bent down and pressed my hand to his cheek. “You believed me.”
“You don’t lie.”
“I—“
“What the hell are you doing here?” My dad grabbed Uncle Tam by the collar of his coat and yanked him away from me. “What did you do to her?”
“Gave her back to you,” he answered simply, as if that was a perfectly logical explanation that would make sense to a man like my father.
I thought I heard a crunch when fist and face connected but if he was in pain Uncle Tam didn’t show it. “I TOLD you—I don’t want my daughter around any of that weird shit of yours. Now what the fuck did you do to my child??”
“She had gone. I brought her back. Dia?” He turned to me and wiped a driblet of blood from his upper lip. “Be well, little one. I’ll see you at Christmas.”
“The hell you….huh?” Dad blinked at the empty space between his clenched fist and the place where Tim-Tam’s coat had been.
They released me in the morning with a neck brace and an apology for shaving my head. “The original pictures showed a fracture and a subdural hematoma,” Dr Vandervliet shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Could I have some chocolate ice cream?” I asked plaintatively. “I didn’t eat last night.”
Mom kissed me. “Ladybug, you can have any damn thing you want. Even McDonald’s. And soon as we get home we’ll call Uncle Tam and let him know you’re all right.
I pointed to the phone beside my bed. “We can call him now.”
Mom laughed and patted my knee. “Honey, it’s night time in Paris. We don’t want to wake him up.”
“He’s not in Paris,” I argued. “He was here last night. He got me in my body and made me better and stuff.”
Mom tossed Dr Vandervliet a nervous smile. “That was some knock on the head, sweetheart. Maybe you wanted to see him and that’s what you remember.”
“—but Mom—“
“Let’s go,” Dad said tersely, cutting us both off.
The nurse went off for a wheelchair and my dad bent down so close I could smell the cigarettes on his breath. “No more weird shit,” he warned softly. “ Keep your feet on the ground in the real world. You were dreaming and that’s that—and I don’t want to hear anything else about it. Jorie? When we get home we’re going to have a long talk with your brother…”
When I got home there were seelie bugs everywhere, and for once they weren’t messing with me or trying to scare me. They darted around my bedroom leaving tiny contrails of light. And when Mom opened the dryer the next day to do a load of laundry she found every friggin’ missing sock that had vanished since we moved into the house.
Soon as I felt well enough to go outside I asked Mom if I could pick a rose from her tiny indoor potted bushes and take some carrots from the fridge. She said yes, and even cut it for me and stripped off the little thorns. “This will make your room smell nice, won’t it?”
“It’s not for me. It’s a present for someone.”
Mom gave me that ‘ohhhhh…” nod that mothers do when they obviously don’t have a clue what their kids are up to but they are fairly sure it doesn’t involve explosives or pornography. Soon as it got dark, I dressed up warm and took the flower and the carrots and my flashlight and slipped out into the snowy garden behind our house.
They were waiting. “I can see you now.”
I can’t say they were beautiful. Beauty is a concept that doesn’t quite translate. Maybe they were to each other. They were very tall, very slim and smelled like rain on a summer’s night. I laid the rose and the carrots at their feet. “Here. Thank you for helping Tim-Tam.”
They nodded, but didn’t touch the offerings. That hurt, a little. “You don’t want it?”
They looked at me, then at the rose and carrots. A seelie bug landed on my hand and tugged at my finger. Then it occurred to me—we never ate without saying grace, right. Did these people do the same?
“It’s called ‘hallowing’”
“Tim-Tam??” I could hear his low chuckled but he was nowhere to be seen in the darkness.
“You can say anything—well, maybe not ‘rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub’. Say what I say when I give back to the Givers. ‘Tetelestai’”
I repeated the strange word. “What does it mean?”
“It means ‘it is completed. It is done.’ And you’ll be done in spades if your father—“
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OUT IN THE SNOW??” A large shadow loomed across the snow.
It was on the tip of my tongue to answer“Nothing.”, but somewhere on the wind I heard a ‘tch-tch’ of disapproval for not telling the truth.
“I’m thanking the saints,” I yelled back.
“Good girl,” he rumbled. “Now get inside. I’ll make you some cocoa.”
That’s when I learned to make the distinction.
The real world is a place where love is so strong that it can reach across oceans and between the worlds bring us back to ourselves.
And weird shit? That’s what makes a daughter lie to her father.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-10 12:19 am (UTC)