Page 53 of Spring's Arcana
Oh, you asshole. She turned away as far as she could, staring at the ashen-bleached landscape as plastic ruffled and he made happy little crunching noises.
The window twitched, rolled up without her touching the old-fashioned handle. The interstate swoop-curved under glossy black tires. Nat’s head ached, and she couldn’t stop rubbing her palms on her jeans, trying to scrub away remembered warm slipperiness.
You keep sending me gifts,the woman said. And the smile on the boy’s face.
The roar of the wind closed away. A faint tang of perfumed smoke mixed with Dmitri’s smoky aftershave, her shampoo, and a faint edge of fried potato from the Pringles he was merrily munching.
She could break the fucking window and dump all his snacks on the road. That would be satisfying, but could she afford to make him angry? The cowardice of that consideration made her writhe. She wished she did have some real power, or that Mama had at least told her something, so she could have…
What could she have done? Anything but what shediddo, which was absolutely nothing.
As fucking usual.
“It was his time, little Natchka-zaika.” For once, Dmitri didn’t sound sarcastic or murderously gleeful. “You gonna have a lot of heartbreak, you get attached to rubes. They are notus. Sooner you accept that, better it’ll be for you.”
I’m notuseither.“You could have done something,” she repeated. The words fell into warm air soughing through the vents, the heater working overtime.
They hadn’t stopped for gas. What did this thing run on? Belief, like Candy said? Or something else, something darker?
“Like what?” Now he sounded genuinely curious.
“You knew this would happen. You could have stopped it.”
“Why? They gonna shoot each other, stab each other, take from each other. Been that way since one of them had a shiny rock the other wanted. I’m not disease,zaika,I am symptom. Some days I wonder…” He exhaled sharply. “You got it easy. Everyone likes the Drozdova, she make the flowers bloom and the little deer frolic,da. But those green things got roots in the dirt and the rot, and for each little deer there a hunter, or a wolf with an empty belly. Gonna starve the wolf because the deer have big cute eyes? Been tried before. Never ends well.”
In other words, everything had an ecology. Even “divinities.”
But Nat’s heart hurt. She kept scrubbing her fingers against herjeans, even though the blood was gone. “How…”Forget it. I don’t want to know. Pennsylvania hills rolled along outside the window, the snow coming down hard now but the black car moving at the same even, gliding pace—too swiftly to be normal.
Nothing was ever going to be normal again, she suspected.
“You want to know how long we live. I tell you.” He took another pull from the plastic bottle, nestled it back between his legs, and smacked his lips. “Long as we can, just like them.” Dmitri twisted the cap back on, and thumped on his chest with a loose fist. At least he didn’t belch. “One thing we got in common with the rubes, at least.”
When he lit another incense-smelling cigarette he rolled his window down most of the way, while Nat stared at whirling white still warmer than the barefoot woman’s devouring chill.
WEAR MINE PROUD
Even though the black car didn’t need gas or chains, even though it streaked through whatever traffic it found like a heated knife through a block of butter, it was still a long while to the Ohio border. They didn’t stop for lunch, and she didn’t want any of the overprocessed crap Dmitri was chowing down on. Every mile under the tires was the farthest from home she’d ever been, and Nat expected to be… well, more afraid than she actually was.
She didn’t want to stop at another gas station. Mom always said they were filthy and the restrooms full of diseased needles, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about dying clerks, gangsters who wouldn’t call an ambulance, or barefoot greenish women who carried a mantle of bone-chilling ice.
The image of that lady—oh, might as well call her what she was, thegoddess—bending over Mom’s hospice bed made Nat’s entire body shrink against itself. She’d thought “flesh crawling” was hyperbole until now.
An early winter dusk swallowed the countryside. Dinnertime came, circled warily, and was left behind. Tired brakelight rubies slithered to the right, bleary diamonds in the opposite lanes. Dmitri steered with two fingers, still happily munching on junk food, and she was almost used to the way the car wriggled into holes in traffic, bumped over ridged ice, and growled when the flow of vehicles clotted on city peripheries.
“So,” he finally said, as the sun died behind the horizon and the snow turned to small pellets of ice stacked at the very edge of the windshield wipers’ arcs. “You ever been to nice hotel,zaika?”
Mom hates hotels. Nat rubbed her hands together. It wasn’t fair that she was sitting here breathing, her heart beating, her bladder increasingly uncomfortable, while some poor kid’s body was on a dirty linoleum floor behind a counter stacked with cigarette cartons, sunglass racks, and other bullshit. “I’m fine. I can drive.” Had anyone found a nasty surprise inside a gas station with its seasonally decorated windows yet?
“Not this beast.” Dmitri shook his head, and the engine gave a deep mechanical chuckle. “He picky. So, you ever been in hotel at all?”
You’re just going to insult me if I say I haven’t.Nat’s fingers ached, her hands tightly clasped. “I thought cars wereshe. Like boats.”
“Where you hear that?” He shook his head, giving her a dark, considering sideways glance. A fresh bloom of stubble had appeared on his planed cheeks and strong chin. Did he use those cutthroat razors for shaving?
She wouldn’t put it past him.
“I just did.” Of course he wouldn’t get the joke. Nat was rubbing her palms on her jeans again; she stopped with an effort.
