Part 106 (1/2)

”Soon,” Esau said easily, manhandling me down the last of the slope. He held up the hand that wasn't knotted around my wrist. I blinked twice before I realized the veined, translucent yellow webs between his fingers were a part of him. He grabbed my arm again, handling me like a bag of groceries.

Pinky hitched himself forward to meet us, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit Esau across the face with his crutch. I imagined the sound the aluminum would make when it shattered Esau's cheekbone. Litters of them. Broods. Easy to give in and let it happen, yes. But litters of what?

”You didn't have to bring Maria into it.”

”We can give her what she wants, can't we? With your help or without it. How'd you get the money for school?”

Pinky smiled past me, a grin like a wolf. ”There was platinum in those chains. Opals. Pearls big as a dead man's eyeball. Plenty. There's still plenty left.”

”So there was. How did you survive?”

”I was guided,” he said, and the blue lights flickered around him. Blue lights that were kin to the silver lights swarming over the river. I could imagine them buzzing. Angry, invaded. I turned my head to see Esau's expression, but he only had eyes for Pinky.

Esau couldn't see the lights. He looked at Pinky, and Pinky met the stare with a lifted chin. ”Come home, Isaac.”

”And let Jacob try to kill me again?”

”He only hurt you because you tried to leave us.”

”He left me for the father of frogs in the salt marsh, Esau. And you were there with him when he did-”

”We couldn't just let you walk away.” Esau let go of my arm with a command to be still, and stepped toward Pinky with his hands spread wide. There was still light down here, where the canyon was wider and the shadow of the walls didn't yet block the sun. It shone on Esau's balding scalp, on the yolky, veined webs between his fingers, on the aluminum of Pinky's crutches.

”I didn't walk,” Pinky said. He turned away, hitching himself around, the beige rubber feet of the crutches braced wide on the rocky soil. He swung himself forward, headed for the river, for the swarming lights. ”I crawled.”

Esau fell into step beside him. ”I don't understand how you haven't ... changed.”

”It's the desert.” Pinky paused on a little ledge over the water. Tamed by the dam, the river ran smooth here and still. I could feel its power anyway, old magic that made this land live. ”The desert doesn't like change. It keeps me in between.”

”That hurts you.” Almost in sympathy, as Esau reached out and laid a webbed hand on Pinky's shoulder. Pinky flinched but didn't pull away. I opened my mouth to shout at him, feeling as if my tongue were my own again, and stopped. Litters.

Whatever they were, they'd be Pinky's children ”It does.” Pinky fidgeted with the crutches, leaning forward over the river, working his forearms free of the cuffs. His shoulders rippled under the white cloth of his s.h.i.+rt. I wanted to run my palms over them.

”Your legs will heal if you accept the change,” Esau offered, softly, his voice carried away over the water. ”You'll be strong. You'll regenerate. You'll have the ocean, and you won't hurt anymore, and there's your woman-we'll take her too.”

I heard the warning in the tone. The anger. Esau did not. He glanced at me. ”Speak, woman. Tell Isaac what you want.”

I felt my tongue come unstuck in my mouth, although I still couldn't move my hands. I bit my tongue to keep it still.

Esau sighed, and looked away. ”Blood is thicker than water, Isaac. Don't you want a family of your own?”

Yes, I thought. Pinky didn't speak, but I saw the set of his shoulders, and the answer they carried was no. Esau must have seen it too, because he raised one hand, the webs translucent and spoiled-looking, and sunlight glittered on the barbed ivory claws that curved from his fingertips, unsheathed like a cat's.

With your help or without it.

But litters of what?

I shouted so hard it bent me over. ”Pinky, duck!”

He didn't. Instead, he threw his crutches backward, turned with the momentum of the motion, and grabbed Esau around the waist. Esau squeaked-shrieked-and threw his hands up, clawing at Pinky's shoulders and face as the silver and blue and coppery lights flickered and swarmed and swirled around them, but he couldn't match Pinky's ma.s.sive strength. The lights covered them both, and Esau screamed again, and I strained, lunged, leaned at the invisible chains that held me as still as a posed mannequin.

Pinky just held on and leaned back.

They barely splashed when the Colorado closed over them.

Five minutes after they went under, I managed to wiggle my fingers. Up and down the bank, there was no trace of either of them. I couldn't stand to touch Pinky's crutches.

I left them where they'd fallen.

Esau had left the keys in the car, but when I got there I was shaking too hard to drive. I locked the door and got back out, tightened the laces on my sneakers, and toiled up the ridge until I got to the top. I almost turned my ankle twice when rocks rolled under my foot, but it didn't take long. Red rock and dusty canyons stretched west, a long, gullied slope behind me, the river down there somewhere, close enough to smell but out of sight. I settled myself on a rock, elbows on knees, and looked out over the scarred, raw desert at the horizon and the setting sun.

There's a green flash that's supposed to happen just when the sun slips under the edge of the world. I'd never seen it. I wasn't even sure it existed. But if I watched long enough, I figured I might find out.

There was still a hand span between the sun and the ground, up here. I sat and watched, the hot wind lifting my hair, until the tawny disk of the sun was halfway gone and I heard the rhythmic crunch of someone coming up the path.

I didn't turn. There was no point. He leaned over my shoulder, braced his crutches on either side of me, a presence solid and cool as a moss-covered rock. I tilted my head back against Pinky's chest, his wet s.h.i.+rt dripping on my forehead, eyes, and mouth. Electric blue lights flickered around him, and I couldn't quite make out his features, shadowed as they were against a twilight sky. He released one crutch and laid his hand on my shoulder. His breath brushed my ear like the susurrus of the sea. ”Esau said blood is thicker than water,” I said, when I didn't mean to say anything.

”Fish blood isn't,” Pinky answered, and his hand tightened. I looked away from the reaching shadows of the canyons below and saw his fingers against my skin, pale silhouettes on olive, unwebbed. He slid one under the black strap of my tank top. I didn't protest, despite the dark red, flaking threads that knotted the green smoke around his hands.

”Where is he?”

”Esau? He drowned.”

”But-” I craned my neck. ”You said Gilmans never drown.”

He shrugged against my back. ”I guess the river just took a dislike to him. Happens that way sometimes.”

A lingering silence, while I framed my next question. ”How did you find me?”

”I'll always find you, if you want,” he said, his patched beard rough against my neck. ”What are you watching?”

”I'm watching the sun go down.”

”Come in under this red rock,” he misquoted, as the shadow of the ridge opposite slipped across the valley toward us.

”The handful of dust thing seems appropriate-”

Soft laugh, and he kissed my cheek, hesitantly, as if he wasn't sure I would permit it. ”I would have thought it'd be 'Fear death by water.'”

The sun went down. I missed the flash again. I turned to him in a twilight indistinguishable from the gloom that hung around his shoulders and brushed the flickering lights away from his face with the back of my hand. ”Not that,” I answered. ”I have no fear of that, my love.”

The Dying of the Light When John Keats was my age, he had been dead for seven years.

The necrophilia makes it seem dirtier than it really is.

Cold comfort, muttered over the phone by 3 a.m.