It’s dangerous to think about Silver Mary as a character in a story because she might become one.
Hiyako saw Giles shrink with the sudden foreboding and lifted her eyebrows. But that reminded him of his realization that Hiyako, with her shakuhachi playing, was a storyteller too, and he shook his head and asked instead, “What do you think Jasmine meant when she said Mother had ‘gone with her Gift?’”
“Giles, when Jasmine brought me to her, Silver Mary had the happiest face I’ve ever seen. As if her true love had come for her. Someone she loved as a young girl in Ireland had found her and taken her home. At least,” and Hiyako looked deeply into his eyes, “that is the story I would tell about her.”
He was supposed to understand something, he could see that. But all he could think was that Hiyako had never looked so beautiful as now, with delicate lids framing deep golden eyes and soft, full lips that he would never kiss.
The moment came when they both realized he’d been staring too long. Giles blushed. Hiyako smiled a secret smile and with a tiny motion of head and eyes let him know that she understood his desire, that she was honored and not offended … and that she needed him to let go of it.
If it had been anyone but Hiyako, Giles would have burned with humiliation at being analyzed and discarded so quickly. Instead he felt happy, as if she had invited him to join her at a richer banquet.
He groped for the thread of the conversation. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Should I …?” Should I try to understand?
“Silver Mary,” she said carefully, “was loved by a god when she was young. Today that god came and took her home. Or so we might tell it.”
She was saying that if he was compelled to tell this story at the Festival, this was how he should tell it. The Romance of Silver Mary. And he felt the pull of such a story: hadn’t he met a goddess this very day and hadn’t she displayed something like affection for him?
“Why,” he asked, thinking as a storyteller, “would he wait until she was old and grey?”
“Perhaps,” began Hiyako, when RJ’s rumbling voice said quietly from the other room, “Women get more beautiful with age. Everyone should know that.”
Giles was annoyed for no good reason. RJ had a young, beautiful wife.
How old was Hiyako? Giles looked at the wisdom lines around Hiyako’s mouth and realized she was older than he thought.
“I met Tiffany today,” he said with embarrassing suddenness, wanting their feedback or just their approval. He realized that he hadn’t finished hearing about his own mother or asked to see her and, face throbbing, was about to apologize.
Hiyako staring at him with shock.
RJ padded in from the other room, sat across from him and the two of them waited intently.
Happy to have such an eager audience (what storyteller doesn’t like rapt listeners?), he told them how he had gotten himself in trouble and how she had saved him.
“And the funny thing was, I really didn’t know anything about Arizona. I’ve never been there, just seen pictures. They want us to tell stories so that we might find out what the demons are up to. I must have accidentally picked up on something the Planners are up to.”
His thoughts skipped. “She was beautiful. And she saved me. When I stepped out, they’d forgotten everything. She just, changed reality so that whatever I did had dropped out of their minds. She saved me.” His eyes were full of stars but he also saw a wryly understanding smile flit across Hiyako’s face: five minutes ago, he’d melted at the thought of kissing her.
His story had outgoing ripples, he could see it in the invisible ball of energy which seemed to jump between their faces. Well, Hiyako said not to be afraid to speak. “So, what can you tell me about what happened?” he asked. “Do you think I’ll, uh, see her again?”
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Hiyako said carefully, with a look of dismay which sank his heart, “I think you will see her again. I think you have to.”
That was not one of the answers he’d expected. “You think I’ll have to see her again? What do you mean?”
“Giles, what do you know about Tiffany?”
“I guess I know what everyone knows. She’s a powerful demon, usually manifests like I saw her, sometimes interferes to save someone who’s desperate, like I was.” He smiled. “And if I’d been a girl, Mother would have named me Tiffany. It was still a popular girl’s name when I was born, though I think it slunk out of favor in the late ‘90s.” He shrugged. “She told me that when I was a boy and I thought she’d been going to name me after the Tiffany lamp.” Mother is gone, he reminded himself with a start.
Hiyako said carefully. “Not everyone knows. Be careful.” Giles hated to see her choosing her words so carefully. “The girl’s name Tiffany is not from the jeweler. It’s really the English form of the Greek name Theophania.”
But before she could say more, RJ said firmly, “We need to take Giles to see Mary.”
Hiyako nodded briskly. “Come.” She rose and extended one of her capable hands. Giles let her help him up, wondering what else she’d been about to say about Tiffany.
When she led him into the bedroom, his heart gave an extra thud. RJ followed and closed the door. His mother’s body was nowhere to be seen and the comfortable bed with covers turned back beckoned invitingly. Mouth dry, he turned to face the couple.
But Hiyako opened a small brown door in the wall on what (from the untidy piles of books and papers covered with sketches) was clearly RJ’s side of the bed.
The door was only as tall as Giles. “She’s still in her own home, Giles. We haven’t called anybody about her yet. We wanted you to see her first. The best way to her home is through the side passages.” Again, she looked intently at him. “We’ll wait here. Have a look.” She frowned. “Pay your last respects,” she modified, “then come back and tell us how to proceed.”
Giles trusted that he would understand what they were hinting when he saw his mother. So he nodded and ducked through the child-sized door, feeling foolish.
When they closed it, his heart pounded: it was as dark as another world. He didn’t know which way to go, or how far. For a moment, with no external stimuli, he felt himself unraveling, vulnerable to the Chaos. He saw his mother as a young woman, before she’d gotten the scar she’d always had on her forehead: she stood in a circle of stones, intently focused on painting one particular reddish rock. He saw the old woman from his story sitting naked on her rock in the sun when she was young, eyes closed. For a moment he was a young girl floating in a warm mineral springs pool surrounded by desert stone, looking up through a pair of trees at the Chaos above. The Chaos parted for a moment and the young girl saw…
But a wavering gleam appeared in the darkness and Giles was safely caught by reality again. A fairy-like caramel-brown figure with a cloud of black curls and gleaming green eyes approached, holding a flashlight so that it didn’t blind him.
Jasmine.
She opened her small arms and reached up. Giles could have picked her up but instead he went down on his knees to hug her.
“Jellyman, how come you didn’t come see me for way way too long?” said that voice which always reminded Giles of tingling silver bells.
“Jazz.” Giles held her at arm’s length and studied her. He had asked if this black child was adopted or was RJ’s or Hiyako’s by a prior marriage because she was so clearly loved by both of them. “How come you’re in here, sweetheart? Are you supposed to show me the way to…?” He couldn’t say “my mother’s body.”
But she shook her head. “You’re not ‘posed to see Silver Mary yet. You need to tell me a story first.”
It was their tradition. He never brought presents or surprises; he brought a story. He shook his head sadly now. “I’m sorry, lil’ Jazz. I didn’t know I’d be coming, so I didn’t… and anyway, this kind of isn’t the time. I’m sorry.”
But to his surprise, Jasmine shook her sprightly head, insisting in a way she never did. “You have to, Uncle Jellyman. Tell me the story of the big red rock and the old woman with the funny hat.”
A shiver went through him but he supposed she’d been listening through the walls. So he sat tailor fashion, took her on his lap and told her the story he had told at the Festival. When he used the word hogan to describe the little house with the peeling paint, he saw on Jasmine’s face that he’d used the wrong word and knew that she saw what he saw.
Gradually he sank into the telling trance and when the woman posed naked, stretched out in the sun, he wasn’t even aware of Jasmine’s reaction. But when he reached the place where the old woman agreed to take the unnamed narrator (Robby Baker, the name popped into his mind) up to the rust colored mountain, and the wall of story’s end approached, he felt pushed to see now what came next.
He could not. The black wall closed in from all directions at once and before he could duck out of the tale, he slid through.
Next moment he floated in darkness, with no purpose, no past or future, about to dissolve into Chaos.
Grief for his lost love poured through him: the stupid computer game he’d been playing and the flashing red lights. He could never ever get her back; nothing was left but to die in aching loneliness.
He would come apart into crashing static in the next moment.