Just before the empty grief crushed him, Giles realized that a small brown hand was in his.
His back was against a solid wall and a little voice sang, “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…”
Jasmine smiled at him, her round little face hopeful but anxious. He was solidly in the world once more.
He squeezed her hand. “I’m out of it. Jeez—jeepers, that was scary.” Should you tell a child that something is scary? “I mean, I’ve just never had anything like that happen to me.”
She didn’t seem surprised. “You ran out of story,” she said, nodding sadly. Only then did he realize that he hadn’t yet told her what had happened. He started to explain, but she was already saying it. “The Black Wall came an’ just swallowed you up.”
“Lil’ Jazz, you’ve got to tell me how you know all this and what’s going on.” Suddenly Giles was trembling.
But Jasmine stayed Jasmine, a clever, quiet little girl. Matter-of-factly, she told him, “See, that’s why you got to go back to that wuggy tuggy ol’ Festival. You can’t get the story ‘less you tell it there. And you got to get the story.”
“But sweetheart, Lil’ Jazz, you know so much, don’t you know what’ll happen to me if I tell more of that story where the Planners can hear me?” He still hesitated to speak so plainly to a child but suddenly he was pleading. “Jasmine, they’ll fill me with the dark that almost ate me just now. They’ll make me die and I’ll be so sad and lonely.”
Jasmine shook her head brightly. “No you won’t neither, ‘cause she’ll save you again. That really pretty lady, don’t you want to see her again?”
Giles stared into Jasmine’s intense eyes. “She told me,” he whispered, hardly daring to hope, “to stay out of trouble.”
Jasmine stood, put her hands on his shoulders. “Grown-ups!” she pronounced. “Are you gonna stay out of trouble just ‘cause she said?”
“But she won’t save me again.”
“Betcha she does.” Jasmine pursed her lips and nodded sagely.
Giles wanted to ask, “Do you think she likes me?” But Jasmine tugged at him and he found himself standing and brushing himself off. “C’mon,” she said.
A cold hand closed over his heart. She was going to take him to see his mother’s body now, that was the reason he was in this dark passage. And he desperately wished he didn’t have to look at her. He wanted to remember her alive and laughing.
But she said, “Don’t let’s go see Silver Mary. You really shouldn’t.”
“Okay,” he said, before the hundred reasons why he must could pour out.
“But say we did, kay? It won’t be lying, I promise, ‘cause Yako and Popster know, but say I took you there, kay?”
While Giles was chewing on that, she opened the little door he’d come through just ten minutes ago. “Here’s my Jellyman,” she announced to the anxiously waiting Hiyako and RJ.
Giles saw her shake her head solemnly. They must have made some gesture to ask if she’d heard any more of the story.
Giles stooped and passed by Jasmine, into the bedroom.
“Hey, what do you know about getting into trouble anyway?” he turned to ask her in something closer to his old teasing tone. “I thought you were always such a good kid.”
But the little door was closed again. Jasmine had not followed him.
As always, Hiyako did most of the talking while RJ was a bulking, comforting presence. She led him back into the kitchen, Giles thinking hard.
Somehow what happened in the secret corridors of this house was invisible to whoever might be listening. They had sent him in there to tell his story to Jasmine and see if he could finish it without being at the Festival. And they needed whatever listener to think he went to see his mother, but he needed not to see her.
But if that “listener” could hear what was said, couldn’t they see the intense looks and gestures Hiyako and RJ gave him? Couldn’t they see he never arrived in his mother’s apartment?
He expected the charade to continue but Hiyako took his hands in her warm ones and leaned toward him. “Everything in there is hidden. Everything in these rooms is halfway; what we do here shapes what will be seen out there. You can say anything here, but there are some things we must not tell you. Please understand.”
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He swallowed and nodded.
“You must go back to the Festival tonight. I will tell you that if you had looked at Silver Mary, you would have seen her face transfigured with happiness. She died very happy, Giles. She’s gone to be with her beloved. Anything else you might have seen if you’d gone to her … just let go of that. Just remember how happy she was.”
Giles saw his mother’s fierce animated face expounding some theory or other, waving her blackthorn walking stick in the air. He could barely imagine that face transfixed with joy, but he did his best.
His eyes filled with tears. “I wish I could just stay here with you two and Lil’ Jazz.” He shivered with physical loathing of going back to the Festival.
“That’d be sweet, young bear,” RJ rumbled.
“Please don’t be angry, Giles,” Hiyako said, looking distressed. “That was what we hoped for you. We’d planned to hide you away, get you lost in the details of taking care of your dear mother. I still wish we could do that for you. You deserve to be out of that hell. But you’ve got to go back. You must tell more of that story.”
Giles realized bitterly that if he hadn’t told them about Tiffany and the Red Rock story, he would be eating with Hiyako and RJ tonight, he might even be living in this wonderful old building soon. Hiyako saw him understand, and looked thoroughly miserable, even when he made himself smile at her.
“So, what, you need that story, it’s important, okay. How do I get it to you? The Bigshots record everything we do but we’re not allowed to. And I can’t commute back and forth; once I’m back there, I’m there until they declare the Festival over. So how do you get to even hear it?”
“We’ll cross that bridge at some point, Giles. You’ll hear it as you tell it. You’ll remember it. Someday when the Festival is over, you’ll come visit us.” But she looked worried, and so did RJ.
A moment later, she straightened up. “At any rate, you don’t need to leave for a couple of hours yet. Come, I’ll play for you.”
He knew what a precious gift Hiyako offered him. She was a world master of the shakuhachi and she was offering to play just for him. It was as if John Lennon returned to life and casually said, “Y’wunna hear a luttle sung I wrote th’other day?”
“Don’t play a piece that tries to tell any kind of story. You’re not a storyteller, y’know.” It was his turn to look meaningful now. Her face registered hurt, then understanding: don’t get pulled into that storytelling festival. She nodded.
But when she’d seated him on the huge pillows in the living room, with RJ’s bulk in a recliner in the corner, she played Sokaku Reibo, a long piece which most definitely tells a story. Just before she started, she looked at him with love, telling him with her eyes that if he must take risks, she would risk all as well. Then she began to play, calmly cross-legged on two pillows on the floor, and she became as still as a deep pool. Every muscle in her body was relaxed and every molecule of her being flowed with the music from her flute.
Much later, the music she played would save him in his darkest passage. For the moment, he drifted, mind cast loose…
We get to swim every day and we’ve got the greatest pool in the world. It’s great big, lots of awesome trees around it and water so minerally you can float on it, looking up at the Chaos, and you hardly never sink under. The Chaos was wild clouds, winds that must make heck-of noise, lightning zapping everything and lots of other stuff that you can’t really make into anything, just ordinary Chaos. The trees by the pool don’t stick up into the Chaos, not quite, so they’re still as anything. The Chaos parted for a minute and I think I saw…
The narrator’s spunky voice faded just before he could see what she’d seen. But it was the same image that had come to him in the dark passage: a girl just becoming a teen floating in a warm springs mineral pool embraced by arms of red rock. He knew he would be telling her story soon, and that it tied in somehow with the story he was already telling.
The Chaos in her world was closer and wilder than in his and there was something beyond it.
He spent one more hour in RJ and Hiyako’s safe haven. RJ fixed him dinner. He asked to see Jasmine again and was told that it would be better if he didn’t. “Just remember that you had a nice visit with her. She’s fine,” Hiyako said softly.
When he said goodbye, she walked him down the carpeted hallway, around the corners which were always sharper than 90 degrees. “Giles,” she said in her quietest voice, putting a hand on his shoulder. Surprised, he turned and faced her. Her eyes gleamed in the warm glow from one of the hall’s globe lamps.
“Jasmine told you the truth. Tiffany will help you. Tell more of the story because then you’ll see her again. Surely that’s something wonderful to hope for?” She looked so weighted by guilt that Giles had a surge of shameful excitement: if he held out his arms right now, she would come into them. Reluctantly perhaps, but she would come. He could kiss her as he’d longed to do.
But his innate decency stopped him. He couldn’t take advantage of her like that. And he wouldn’t enjoy anything she gave him out of guilt and sorrow.
With mortification, he saw her wise eyes follow his entire thought process. She stepped forward, took his hand in both of hers, folded it closed with her fingers and kissed his knuckles. He realized she was crying.
“Go,” she said, without looking into his eyes again, speaking to his closed hand. “Find your beautiful demon and win her.”
He couldn’t quite remember how they actually parted or the moment when he passed out of the building again. His feet clumped quietly down the twisting stairs and he got into his car with the same bemused expression on his face. The engine seemed to hum with extra sweetness.
His mother was dead but he had seen her face and she was gone to a good place. She’d been transfigured with joy, happier than he’d ever seen her in life.
He’d had a good visit with dear friends, played with little Jasmine and was glad she was still the same sweet child she’d always been. All too soon she’d turn into a teenager and probably become a rebellious creep.
He drove deliberately back to the wuggy tuggy ol’ festival which he hated and dreaded. He had a beautiful demon to win.