“Hardly. Ain’t stupid, you know.”
“I do know, so don’t act it. Oh, that damn man!”
“He’s a hex. They ain’t like other people.”
Chess gave a bitter little laugh, then chased it with an even longer swig. “Oh no, they sure ain’t, and neither is he — ’cept from the waist down. ’Cause that part of him’s pretty much like every other motherfucker I ever met.”
Morrow didn’t know what-all to say to that, so he just kept quiet. They sat together an interminable minute, locked back into a strange parody of companionability — Chess looking off, eyes narrowed, with Morrow too het up to do much more than keep his own breath steady. ’Til both of them were finally interrupted by a noise — all too familiar to Morrow — which grew ever more insistent.
Eventually Chess snapped out, “Just what the hell is that?”
“My . . . timepiece, I think,” Morrow said, at last.
“You need to do somethin’ about it, then, real damn fast. Thing’s ’bout to give me a headache. Jesus Christ!”
Reluctantly, Morrow drew out the Manifold, popped its lid — and gaped, as both spinning needles instantly resolved, a set trap snapping: red on red, upper part of the scale, same as Asbury’d always claimed they would. Pointing, for all the Goddamn world . . . straight at Chess.
Morrow heard Rook’s velvet rasp pick at his brain’s folds: Thing’ll come in handy, eventually — you’ll figure out why. Soon enough.
That’s why I could never get a clear reading, Morrow thought, helpless to not complete the equation, even when it’d already been made so mocking-clear. ’Cause Chess is always standing there, right beside Rook. And Chess . . . vicious little Chess Goddamn Pargeter, who used to suck cock for bullets, and’ll shoot you just for standin’ still if he don’t like the look on your face while you’re doin’ it . . . Chess is a hex, too.
The start of one, anyhow, seeing how true “grievous bodily harm” hadn’t had its way with him. But more than enough for Rook to siphon a bit of it off whenever he’d been preyed on, and needed to do some preyin’ of his own, in return.
All I need to trust about you, Ed, Rook’s ghost-voice told him, is that you at least know to do what I tell you. So . . . do you? We good?
“Yes sir,” Morrow muttered, out loud — then rose in one heave and walked away fast, while he could still be fairly sure Chess thought he was talking to him.
BOOK TWO: SKULL FLOWER
California, Arizona, New Mexico — Beginning April 9, 1865
Month Three, Day Seven Reed
Festival: Xochimanaloya, or Presentation of Flowers
Today’s Lord of Night (Number Six) is Chalchiuhtlicue, “She of the Jade Serpent-Skirt” or “She whose Night-robe of Jewel-stars Whirls Above.” Chalchiuhtlicue was the ruler over the Fourth Sun, the world immediately previous to our own. That world was destroyed by flooding.
The Aztec trecena Mazatl (“Deer”) is ruled by Tepeyollotl — Heart of the Mountain, the Jaguar of Night, lord of darkened caves. Tepeyollotl is Tezcatlipoaca disguised in a jaguar hide, whose voice is the echo in the wilderness and whose word is the darkness itself.
By the Mayan Long Count calendar, the protector of day Acatl (“Reed”) is also Tezcatlipoaca, who provides the days’ shadow soul. Acatl is the sceptre of authority which is, paradoxically, hollow.
Today is a day when the arrows of fate fall from the sky like lightning bolts. A good day to seek justice, a bad day to act against others.
CHAPTER SIX
Two Years Earlier
Once, the Rainbow Lady had told Asher Rook, in dreams, a human ball-player was enticed by owls to pit his skills against the lords of death, and made a descent into what was then called Xibalba. He swam the river of blood, yet did not become drunk with it. He reached the crossroads, the Place of All Winds, where he took not the red road, nor the white, nor the yellow, but the black. He entered the bone canoe, piloted by spiders and bats. He sank downwards, through cold water, to the whole world’s bottom.
Xibalba, as it was called then. Mictlan, as it became. Mictlan-Xibalba, as it is now, and will be, forever more.
When he arrived, however, he was met only with mockery and betrayal. The Sunken Ball-Court’s kings set him impossible tasks, then cheated the rules to make sure he would fail, and sent him to be executed, decreeing that his severed head should be set in a tree by the wayside, as a warning to other travellers.
Promptly, the tree flowered all over, producing a hundred succulent calabash melons that attracted the attention of Blood Maiden, the Blood Gatherer’s beautiful daughter. She reached up to pick one, only to discover she held the ball-player’s skull instead. The skull spat in her hand, and told her: Though my face is gone, it will soon return, in the face of my son. And she found herself pregnant.
Because this is how things begin, always, little king: in darkness, in chaos. In blood.
The world we know, a child conceived in death, a saviour made from bones. The flower from the skull.