Craving (38 page)

There was a scuffle, as if the hysterical man were trying to get inside, and my host was attempting to keep him out. Then suddenly, the cart of tools was overturned in an echoing clatter.

“Get control of yourself!”

The familiar voice began to laugh and sob at once, sounding almost insane. My skin tingled with gooseflesh. It was like Ursula’s cackle all over again.

“I’m trying, Karl, but it’s . . . it’s like a . . . a . . . drug. You know it is. I can see it on your face. You’re not trying to keep me from seeing her! You just want it all for yourself.”

Karl, hmm?

“If you don’t calm down . . .” Karl’s voice dropped to a terrifying depth as he leaned over his companion. “I’m running out of cells, but I’m sure we can find somewhere to put you.”

The other man cackled and seemed to get roughly to his feet. “Just let me talk to her, once. Let me ask her what she meant! Just let me ask, one time, and I’ll . . . I’ll leave if you want. I’ll vanish! Please!”

There was another thump of an object falling over; the stranger had been shoved away. “You can’t walk away from this, Moksha. It’s too late. There’s no going back. There is no vanishing.”

“But . . .” I finally recognized the voice, though it was much changed. “But what about the cure? I thought . . . I thought that . . .”

“There is no cure,” Karl dismissed, to my shock. “The Arhat of the Sangha are damned and the only member of the First Circle that is still alive is Ananda.”

I could almost picture the pompous CEO, fallen from high, shaking his head in confusion above the white collar of his pristine blazer. “No. I thought so too, but . . . but when she . . . you
can
see it, can’t you? She had to have . . . to be that way, she had to have been exposed to . . . I’m not mad, Karl, I know what I saw!”

“Forget it.”

“I can’t!” Moksha cried. His voice sank to the floor and vanished within the folds of frantic weeping.

My heart jerked painfully in my chest as I lay there, trying to silence what I felt. I wanted to hate him. I wanted him to fall into a pit of black despair, just as my sister had fallen to that black street, but it felt wrong, somehow. It was Arthur’s voice I heard in the back of my mind, reminding me of the
dharma.

There is no going back.

I had no idea what Moksha had seen, what he needed to glean from further contact with me, but I had no choice.

I sat up suddenly and found him with my gaze.

Karl’s back was to me. He was glaring down at the crumpled figure in disgust, fixing his collar and adjusting his expensive watch.

“I knew it was wrong to trust you with Ursula. It is obvious she has had a negative effect on your state of mind. It’s not surprising with an attractive gift like hers, especially to someone like you.” There was scorn in his voice, as if he found Moksha’s imperfection particularly repulsive.

“Me? What about you? You drink blood just as we did.”

“And yet I’m not a slavering lunatic like she was. I hate to say it, but I think the others were right.”

Tears slipping down his face, Moksha looked up at him vaguely. “A black mirror,” he whispered, “that’s what Ursula saw. That’s what we both saw.”

Karl shook his head and walked to the desk, where he picked up the telephone and summoned assistance. I slid from the table and onto my knees in front of Moksha.

I want to save everyone,
I thought.

Without knowing why, I reached out and touched his face, brushing blood and tears away. Life sparked back into his eyes and they found me with something like awe. I watched his expression change from loss to abundance, watched him relax back against the wall with the bliss of a child.

“You asked me about weaknesses . . . you were hers and she was yours,” he said quietly, putting his cold hands over mine. “Now you’re perfect; alone, but surrounded.”

“What do you know about the Guardians?” I asked.

I heard Karl spin and drop the phone at the sound of my voice, but I ignored it.

Moksha gave me a slack smile. “Do they want Ananda back now? They can have him. We won’t need him anymore.”

“Why were they paying Eva?”

Moksha shrugged and lifted one of my hands to kiss. I was surprised to find that my skin did not crawl. The poor man, it seemed, had had some kind of break. He no longer seemed at all threatening. “Perhaps they wanted to be sure he was safe. Maybe they knew she was different. That you both were.”

All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“You didn’t know until I mentioned the money,” I pressed, cradling his moist face. “That was the first time, in your office.”

He nodded happily, a shattered mess. “They knew we would be blinded by her. But how did they know? How could they see? They’re just human, but they knew. I lost hope too soon. Now I’m too small to survive. I am so tired,” he murmured, just before Karl shoved me back and pulled him to his feet. I stayed on my knees while they dragged the man who had once been my only enemy from the room. He didn’t fight them, didn’t look away from me as went to whatever imprisonment they had with a smile on his face.

Karl reappeared almost instantly, his face contorted in outrage. I had only a moment to stand up and compose myself. When our eyes met, my spine experienced a surging prickle that landed at the base of my skull and reverberated over the surface of my skin. A lethargic, medicated feeling dampened the urge to run even as gooseflesh rose on my arms. I thought about how long I had been there, vulnerable to his unknowable perversions, and nearly jumped behind the examination table.

“Feeling rested?”

After gathering my strength, I managed to summon a retort. “Why yes, I always find rubber floors so very comfortable. By the way, someone bit a hole in the wall, you might want to have it looked at.”

He smiled, though his eyes maintained the voltage up my spine. It was clear that my delayed reaction was like patting him on the back for a job well-done.

“I apologize if the accommodations did not meet your expectations. None of our other guests have complained.”

“I noticed that they don’t have tongues.”

His laugh was a staccato hiss. “Indeed. They seem to like keeping secrets.”

I crossed my arms and tried to seem strong and independent, though I felt truly on my own for the first time. Arthur’s enigma and Eva’s mystery were both preferable to this conundrum.

I looked away and thought about what Arthur had said about me being all that he desired. “You seem so sincere about wanting a cure, and yet you store your fellow Arhat in vaults. So, I suppose you understand why I’m confused. Who are you? What
exact
function do you serve in the Sangha? Are you a lackey, because I don’t like dealing with underlings.”

“I have lived for hundreds of years. Do you honestly think you can intimidate me?”

“I don’t care if I can or not. It’s a simple question and the fact that you don’t answer it tells me a great deal. So when do I get to see your bosses?”

He regarded me stoically for a time, then shook his head, obviously disappointed. “You are stubborn, just like her.”

“Runs in the family. You think I’m a bitch, you should’a met my mom.”

He snorted and propped open the dislodged patio door. The scent of lavender and mint wafted by me on a delicious draft. “I take it the
jhana
has had no effect.”

I cocked my head to one side, “Actually, it’s done me a world of good. Did you know that you can go wherever you want and
see
whatever you want?”

He froze and looked at me over his shoulder, watching me for signs of dishonesty. Apparently, he hadn't gotten that metaphysical memo. Ursula’s gift tickled at my hindbrain. I could see I had achieved a level of the
jhana
he had not. The thought was comforting. I sneered back, tempted to stick out my perfect tongue, and the perusal ended. He walked through the doors and waved a hand in beckoning.

I followed him reluctantly, glancing at the solid objects on display, wondering how quickly he would respond if I picked one up and
intended
to bash him over the head with it. My fingers went out, but as if my arm was not my own, the numbing effects of his stare crippled me.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you. It would be disastrous for your health. It usually is when the brain and the body go in separate directions.”

Power over others.

It was his gift, and I had no means to escape it. Moksha had been so hysterical that Karl could not control him, and it had gotten him a cell in the bowels of the compound. Even if I had had a way to shrug off its effects, there was no guarantee that I would get any farther than he.

I curled my fingers back into my palm and looked after his unconcerned back. I passed through the door and was immediately struck blind. I lifted a hand to shade my eyes, and slowly they began to adjust, though the light still hurt me.

We were in a more private section of a garden. There was an elevated koi pond to my right and a waterfall trickled away from it, following a tiny path that wrapped around the dense shrubs. Trailing behind, I memorized as much detail as possible, creating a map in my mind that would be useful when I needed to “kick ass and take names.”

Around the bend, the path widened. Fruit trees and flowering bushes buzzed with insect life, and I had never before seen so many. They crawled on every surface, and for the first time, I could hear them, feel them, sense their existences as they went about their munching and pollinating.

Surprised, I stared around me, following some internal impulse to seek out the little distortions. A hummingbird fluttered around a beautiful lilac bush in full bloom. It hovered beside me for a moment at eye level, its body still, its wings a blur of movement. Almost as if it was acknowledging me, it stayed and only jaunted away when the jailor stopped and glared my way. It zigged and zagged to the air above the bush and turned back to see me. I found myself smiling, wondering what it saw.

Was this the true value of the
jhana
? Was it like a reset button, pulling me from my mind, so that I could reevaluate the world? It was incredible how detailed things were, and equally incredible that I had never noticed it before.

I was just beginning to think highly of the Arhat’s aesthetic sense when the growth suddenly tapered off and the path turned to a thick green lawn.  It was a large open space, a kind of manmade hill. Around its edges, other paths converged and at the top, a large tree reached toward the sun, casting speckles of light on the green slope, full of birds and bugs, swaying gently in the wind.

Around its thick trunk, there seemed to be a circle of large boulders, and beside one of the smaller rocks stood a man in a saffron-colored robe that looped over one shoulder like a sari. He was bald, his muscled arms holding a platter, upon which sat a tea set. He looked up into the branches of the tree, speaking to it.

My unsociable host led me up the hill toward the tree and as we crested the rise, I realized that the boulders were not in a circle. Indeed, they were in no discernible pattern at all. The entire base of the tree had been turned into a tiny desert and lines had been scored in the sand. They swirled without direction around the randomized rocks, like little whirlpools or ant trails; a massive fingerprint of soft, white powder. It was lovely, a contrast of life and dearth of life, a yin and yang that seemed so perfect it was impossible.

Zen.

As we reached the edge of the rock garden, the monk again spoke up into the tree, uttering a few smooth words that sounded almost coaxing. He glanced at me and at sight of my gender, instantly averted his gaze. As if desperate, he looked back up into the branches and pleaded with them.

To my surprise, there was a sudden motion and a person dropped out of the dense foliage. It was not really a drop, per say. It was as if they alighted on the ground, as if the air gently settled them there of its own free will. Movement utterly conserved, the yellow robe drifted into place and a long, beautiful, golden arm snaked out to touch the tree trunk as if in thanks.

Bewildered, I stood looking at the person with my mouth hanging open.

“I told you not to let him climb the tree,” my captor snarled at the monk with the tray.

The tree-climber’s eyes were wide and childlike. He had a playful mouth that might laugh at any time. He was striking, similar in coloring and bone structure to Arthur and the man beside me, but the longer I gazed at him, the less distinct he became. I could not tell his gender. If not for our host’s convenient pronouns, I would have been at a loss, even with my new eyes.

As I looked at him and my eyes met his darker ones, it seemed all of my nervousness subsided. I began to feel fuzzy, as if nothing sounded better than taking a seat on the sand and sharing a cup of tea with him.

His smile widened.

“You
will
talk to this woman,” my host said, and something in his tone told me that they had gone through a similar scenario before without success. “This ridiculous silence ends now! Do you understand?”

The robed man didn’t even acknowledge Karl, or his perfect voice. He just stood there smiling at me as if we were long lost friends. Warmth began to replace the cold lack of feeling my guide had awakened. It was almost as if I could go back to the
jhana
while standing there and fly over the tree anytime I wanted.

The jailer then turned to the man with the tea set and barked some instructions at him in the dead language. As if annoyed that he had to listen when his real master preferred sitting in trees, the servant gave a shallow bow.

“You will sit with him and talk,” the jailer then said to me.

Of course I would, I mused. Really I had no other choice, for nothing at that moment sounded as lovely. I was completely calm, staring into the man’s eyes, and it was then that my
trishna
grumbled in protest.

Awakened to my senses, I turned to Karl. “Why should I?”

It was the first time I had questioned him. It didn’t matter that there was nothing to gain from it; the fact that I
could
impressed him. He stared at me, astonished. Then, leaning close in a threat, he dropped his deep voice even lower. It plumbed the depths of my ear canal and echoed off my resolve, and I could almost hear the machinations in it, the self-control it took to craft. “Because if you do not, you
will
regret it.”