Page 48 of Spring's Arcana
He seemed like the type.
Dmitri waited, his hands on the wheel-yoke. The engine settled into a low silken groaning.
“Well?” he said, finally.
“West.” A lump had settled in Nat’s throat. Leo hadn’t even come down for coffee; the morning’s stinging-hot shower had washed away the last of Nat’s tears. She was almost light-headed, a strange clarity probably the result of pulling an all-nighter.
“Be more specific,zaika.”
I don’t think I will. “West,” she repeated, stubbornly, and reached for her seatbelt. There was no reason to tell him the name of the town for a while, especially since she’d looked up routes and alternates this morning on her ancient, duct-taped laptop.
Paid good money and still works, Natchenka. You don’t get new one if old still works.
Dmitri shrugged, dropped the car into gear, and pulled away from the curb. The unchained tires had no problem with slipping; they chewed up the freeze, reaching greedily for concrete underneath. “Keep your secrets,” he muttered, and adjusted the rearview mirror, probably unnecessarily.
Nat intended to. She stared out the window, watching the frozen city sink deeper into winter’s grip, and was shaken with the sudden certainty that she would never see Leo again.
Well, he didn’t want her. There wasn’t anything left in him, Mama had it all. Even the few small crumbs Nat had assumed were a child’s natural feast were gone too, because she was all grown up now.
Yes, she had a plethora of ideas. None of them were comforting, so she wiped angrily at her dry cheeks and settled herself to endure this trip the way she’d endured everything else in her life.
THE DRIVE
THOSE WHO EAT
Outracing the storm on a ribbon of pavement, the car gulping at sanded miles and taking shallow curves with graceful authority, wasn’t a bad way to travel. She would have liked it better if she was the one driving, but at least Dmitri didn’t bother pretending he liked her.
It was almost refreshing, certainly better than thinking you had an ally and finding out differently when it counted. Nat watched the scenery change, white-jacketed hills bobbing like waiter-ducks at a busy, watery restaurant. Some were wooded, but most bore a crop of houses and streets on their backs. Even the modesty strips left at the sides of freeways couldn’t truly hide the nakedness of the land behind. Concrete arteries brought prosperity, like the historical iron horses galloping from coast to coast over the graves of the indigenous, but they were also digestive pathways, and a whole lot of shit ran off them.
Was everything she imagined real, or only some things? Once you started believing in crucified literary figures, pinup nurses with “special iodine,” divinities, and miracles, who was to say where it ended? Did the roads have a divinity? The gravel shoulders, the signs, the trees crying out soundlessly when the chainsaw bit?
Once they were free of the city’s broad sprawling arms and grasping suburban fingers, Dmitri pushed the accelerator steadily floorward and rolled his window down a bit. He dug in an inside pocket of his splattered suit jacket, fishing out a crumpled red-and-white pack of cigarettes, not last night’s Cyrillic-lettered one. Theydidn’t look American; it was no brand Nat had ever seen in bodegas or tobacco shops.
It was enough to make her want to laugh. Ofcoursehe would have a car and cigarettes she’d never seen before. Maybe they were divine cancer-sticks.
He tapped one out and stuck it between his lips, gave her a crafty sideways glance. “Like what you see?”
Do you not have any other clothes?She returned her gaze to the silver hood ornament’s snarling as it clove empty air. “I was just thinking it’s rude to smoke in the car when you know someone else doesn’t.”
“I am very polite.” He kept two fingers on the wheel-yoke, flicked the middle finger of his other hand at the cigarette in his mouth, and inhaled deeply as the tip turned bright red. “I open the window. Also, I offer you one. Want a smoke,zaika?”
“God, no.” She watched, but he didn’t flinch. Was it blasphemous to think he might disappear if she started reciting in Latin? “Are there demons too?”
“Matter of definition.” The words rode a long scree of perfumed smoke. These cigarettes smelled vaguely like incense with an undertone of grilled meat, not like tobacco at all. Maybe it was some kind of divine drug, and he’d get them into an accident before crossing the state line. “There are destroyers and things which eat, sure. But you and me,zaika,we’re eternal. The hungry things flee us. Mostly.”
Good to know. “You and me?”
“Oh, yeah. See, there are what little rubes make when they believe.” He held the accelerator down, still steering with two fingers as the car swung into the left lane to pass a wallowing Trailways bus. “Those clot up after time, and attention keeps them fresh. They eat too, just not like the carrion. Then there are therealpowers. Like us, like Baba. Like Candy, too. She took a shine to you, little girl. Threatened me to be nice.”
“I’m sure it made an impression.” Nat wrinkled her nose and cracked her own window a sliver. The slipstream was oddly muted,as if they weren’t going very fast at all, but a cold fresh breeze tiptoed into the car. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy to take advice.”
“You don’t know. I am reasonable fellow,zaika.” He grinned, staring at the road like he saw dinner there. “You could just tell me where your mama hid it, I go get my property, and we are all happy.”
Oh, sure.Nat decided she was better off not talking to him and turned slightly, staring out the window. She’d been too stunned to ask Candy much in the way of real questions; Leo had kept his door closed this morning. It was fine, though. Really it was. Everything went better when she just worked things out for herself.
But Dmitri liked having a captive audience, or he wasn’t getting the memo about her ignoring him.
“The belief is good,” he continued. “Tasty. But without it, real powers still exist, just in different shapes. Wolf chases away vulture and takes a bite, there I am. The flowers come and the dirt no more frozen, there you are. Two insects fuck in midair, there’s Candy. And when black ice comes round to crack trees in depths of winter, there is old bitch Baba.”
