A few days later, out the city and up the river, in the spot where we had bathed Dusk, under pale light so dead, I waited. Now and then darkness reclaimed the landscape, when a cloud blinded the soulless eye on the sky as it had blinded the precious moons in Dusk’s face.
Sometimes, as I was standing as still as a rock, fish bounced off me. They tickled my shivering hands and swam between my knees.
Mardhaka would arrive any moment now, and I would tell her about angels as Sefferio De Dalmea saw them. With one wing smaller than the other, with smiles that spanned only half the face. With hands that reached whenever the sinner had hidden, and with stares that turned said sinners into rock unless they truly repented. Repent from what? From sins they, sometimes, had never considered such. The Devils of Drussiltan was, as Luberto had explained to me after I finished reading it, an exploration into the intrusive thoughts of the author and the customs of his people he despised. Sefferio yearned for divine justice to right the wrongs of his people, and constantly wondered if he didn’t foster one of these flaws, equally as lethal and yet invisible to him. This obsessive yet fascinating concept elevated this baseborn man to levels of recognition that had eventually resulted in his fall, drugged and stabbed by the husband of his lover. There were other interesting things in Sefferio’s biography, and, even if I didn’t know of them that night, I soon learned them as some interesting trivia spouted out by Luberto.
A crow landed on my left shoulder first, and it denuded himself into a parrot. Likewise, a macaw who landed on my right shoulder “shapeshifted”—and I must use scare quotes because I could see right through Mardhaka’s illusions— into an albino raven. He was a tear of the moon, a child of a vein of silver. It was leagues more beautiful than the macaw Mardhaka pretended for him to impersonate.
This bird held me a stare as more and more birds arrived as trailblazers for or omens of her mistress. This raven had grey eyes, a progression from white to black that started on the feathers and concluded in the pupil. White crescendo of darkness that he was. Or rather—White crescendo of darkness: that he was.
His feathers heckled slightly as he examined my face. He sensed something unnatural about me, something that didn’t belong. He would have never pecked the cheek of a real person only to find his beak sometimes penetrated deep into the interior of the mouth. I was a curiosity for this decolored raven.
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I was so enthralled in my silent, ontological conversation with this individual that I only noticed the arrival of Mardhaka when the water rose to my chest only to descend again a second later.
“is he the one? The one that shall be immortalized in your dreams, Mardhaka?” I asked before she had a chance to speak.
“May be, every single one may be. Any single one could be.”
“Then why it wasn’t there the other day, when you crowned yourself in a halo of swallows?” I probed further. If there were questions Mardhaka wouldn’t mind, they would be ones about this raven.
After a few seconds of pensiveness, she answered. “He comes when he wants to. He goes when he wants to. That is all there is to it.”
“The other day, you said the ones that wouldn’t come out of their own volition would be forced by your illusions. Did you break your own rule?”
“Mine is the prerogative to make the rules, therefore mine is the prerogative to number the exceptions.” She sat on the cold river, and another small wave washed over me. The raven and the parrot flew back to Mardhaka, with the parrot joining the pandemonium on her wings, and the raven landing right between her horns.
“A speech worthy of what you are.”
“And a retort worthy of what you are. Tell me, dream, what do you have for me in this moonfull night?”
I stood just to shift to a polite kneel. “I bring a story of terrible men with decrepit wings and their victims. A tale devised to strike terror into the hearts of they who the author despised, amongst whom he counted his very self.”
Mardhaka tilted her head like a curious puppy. “Winged men? Why? How?”
“They call them angels. Celestial aid of their gods.”
“I see; I have heard of angels. Tell me this story. Do you recall it word by word?”
“What you ask for is a miracle, Mardhaka. But I will do my best so my retelling is faithful to the source.”
She chuckled and lay onto the riverbed. “Good. We have all night. No one who doesn’t step into the river can see or hear us.”
“Another thing before I begin my narration: you once told me the birds served you only during the day? Yet midnight is about to come, and they are still at your service. Why? How?”
“Parrots and ravens are birds of flock; I have but to beckon for them to make an exception to their nightly routine. Are you worried about the genocide,” and there was an unbelievable amount of venom contained in this word, more so than on the others, “of poor soulless dreams this may cause? Because, yes, birds have dreams, Terus, and I appear in them; birds have nightmares, Terus, and I dispel them.”
“I dream too, and I do not fear waking up. My question arose out of simple curiosity: had you lied to this lie?”
She grunted, displeased. “Just get to the narration before I learn how to sew using your ribs and intestines, will you?”
“It will be my pleasure, sister.” I poked the bear, and lost the head once more due to that. Her loss: she would have to wait for me to reappear, and, unlike her, I had nothing better to do at night.