The Ivory and the Horn

Bird Bones And Wood Ash

1

At first, Jaime knows them only as women with the faces of animals: mare and deer, wild boar and bear, raven and toad. And others. So many others. Following her.

They smell like forest loam and open field; like wild apple blossoms and nuts crushed underfoot. Their arms are soft, but their hands are callused and hard, the palms like leather. Where they have been, they leave behind a curious residue of dried blood and rose petals, tiny bird bones and wood ashes.

In those animal faces, their eyes are disconcertingly human, but not mortal. They are eyes that have seen decades pass as we see years, that have looked upon Eden and Hades. And their voices, at times a brew of dry African veldt whispers and sweet-toned crystal bells, or half-mad, like coyotes and loons, one always rising above the others, looping through the clutter of city sound, echoing and ringing in her mind, heard only from a distance.

They never come near, they simply follow her, watching, figments of post-traumatic stress, she thinks, until they begin to leave their fetish residue in her apartment, in her car, on her pillow. They finally approach her in the graveyard, when the mourners are all gone and she's alone by Annie's grave, the mound of raw earth a sharp blade that has already left a deep scar inside her.

They give her no choice, the women. When they touch her, when they make known their voiceless need, she tells them she's already made the choice, long before they came to her.

All she lacked was the means.

"We will give you the means," one of them says.

She thinks it's the one with the wolf's head who spoke. There are so many of them, it's hard to keep track, all shapes and sizes, first one in sharp focus, then another, but never all at the same time. One like a woodcock shifts nervously from foot to foot. The rabbit woman has a nose that won't stop twitching. The one like a salmon has gills in her neck that open and close rhythmically as though the air is water.

She must have stepped into a story, she thinks— one of Annie's stories, where myths mingle with the real world and the characters never quite know which is which. Annie's stories were always about the people, but the mythic figures weren't there just to add color. They created the internal resonance of the stories, brought to life on the inner landscapes of the characters.

"It's a way of putting emotions on stage," Annie explained to her once. "A way of talking about what's going on inside us without bogging the story down with all kinds of internal dialogue and long-winded explanations. The anima are so... immediate."

If she closes her eyes she can picture Annie sitting in the old Morris chair by the bay window, the sunlight coming in through the window, making a pre-Raphaelite halo around the tangle of her long hennaed hair as she leans her chin on a hand and speaks.

"Or maybe it's just that I like them," Annie would add, that pixie smile of hers sliding across her lips, her eyes luminous with secrets.

Of course she would, thinks. She'd like the animal women, too.

Jaime isn't so sure that she does, but she doesn't really question the women's presence— or rather the reality of their presence. Since Annie's death, nothing is as it was. The surreal seems normal. The women don't so much make her nervous as cause her to feel unbalanced, as though the world underfoot has changed, reality curling sideways into a skein of dreams.

But if the women are real, if they can help...

"I'll do it," she tells them. "I'll do it for Annie."

The rat-snake woman sways her head from side to side. Her human eyes have yellow pupils, unblinking in her scaled features.

"This is not about the storyteller," she says.

"It is for all those who have need of a strong mother," explains the wild boar, lisping around her tusks.

The ground seems more unbalanced than ever underfoot. Jaime puts out a hand and steadies herself on a nearby headstone. Annie's neighbor now. The scar inside is still so raw that it's all Jaime can do to blink back the tears.

"I don't understand," she tells them. "If it's not about Annie, then why have you come to me?"

"Because you are strong," the raven says.

"Because of your need," the salmon adds.

The mountain lion bares her fangs in a predatory grin.

"Because you will never forgive them," she says.

She lays her hand on Jaime's arm. The rough palm is warm and has the give of a cat's paw. Something invisible flickers between them— more than the warmth: a glow, a spark, a fire. Jaime's eyes widen and she takes a sharp breath. The lioness's gift burns in her chest, in her heart, in her belly, in her mind. It courses through her veins, drums in her temples, sets every nerve end quivering.

One by one, the others approach. They hold her in their soft arms, touch her hands with their callused palms. Fairy godmothers in animal guises, bestowing their gifts.

2

It's a night in late July and Karl thinks he's dreaming.

He's in that private place inside his head where everything is perfect. He doesn't have to be careful here. He can be as rough as he likes, he can leave a roadmap of bruises and cuts and welts, he can do any damn thing he wants and it doesn't make a difference because it's just in his head. He doesn't have to worry about his wife finding out, about what a neighbor or a teacher might say. Nobody's going to come around asking awkward questions because it's just in his head.

Here's he's hard forever and children do exactly what he tells them to do or he punishes them. How he punishes them.

Tonight's scenario has his youngest daughter tied to her bed. He's just come into the room and he's shaking his head.

"You've been a bad, bad girl, Judy," he tells her.

When she starts to cry, he brings his hand out from behind his back. He doesn't own a belt like this anywhere except for in his private place. The leather is thick, so thick the belt can barely bend, and covered with large metal studs.

Karl's problem is that it's not his daughter there on the bed tonight. He just doesn't know it yet.

I only caught the tail end of what really happened in Judy's bedroom earlier tonight. I heard her crying. I saw him zipping up his pants. I heard him remind her how if she ever told anybody about their special secret that bad people would take her and her sister away and put them in a horrible prison for bad girls. How they'd have to stay there forever and it, would break their mother's heart and she would probably die.

I wanted to kill him right then and there, but I waited. I clung to the side of the tenement's wall and shivered with anger, but I've learned how to be patient. I've found a less messy way to deal with the monsters. I don't do it for them; I do it for those who are left behind. To save them the trauma of waking to find their loving husband/father/boyfriend/uncle disemboweled on the floor.

I wait until he's asleep, then I come in through his bedroom window. I pad over to the bed where he's lying beside his sleeping wife and step up, balancing my weight like a cat, so there's no give in the mattress, no indication at all that I'm crouched over the monster, hands free from their gloves, palms laid against his temples. The contact, skin to skin, makes me feel ill, but it lets me step into his private place.

It's only there, when he moves towards the bed with the belt, that I make myself known. I break the ropes tying my Judy-body to the bed as though they were tissue paper. When he looks at me he doesn't see a scared child's eyes anymore. He sees my eyes, the hot bear-rage, the unblinking snake-disdain, searing his soul.

And then I take him apart.

It's a tricky process, but I'm getting better, at it with practice. The first few times I left a vegetable behind and that's no good either. Some of these families can barely keep a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs. No way they can afford the chronic hospital care for the empty monster shells I left behind.

So I've refined the process, emasculating them, making it impossible for them ever to hurt anybody again, but still functional. Barely. Scared of everything, including their own shadow. But no more likely to regress to their former selves than I am to forgive them.

Karl's wife never wakes as I leave their bedroom through the window. I make it to the roof and I have to rest. It would be easier just to kill them but I know this way is better. It leaves me feeling weak, with a tear in my soul as though I've lost a piece of myself. I think I leave something behind each time— more than that anima residue of dried blood and rose petals, bird bones and wood ash. I leave some part of myself that I'll never be able to regain, but it's worth it. I just have to think of the sleeping child and know that, for her, at least, the monster won't be returning.

I want a shower so bad it hurts, but the night's young and it's still full of monsters. That's what breaks my heart. There are always more monsters.

3

It's cold for a September night, colder still on the rooftop where I crouch, and the wind can find me so easily, but I don't feel the chill.

I used to laugh at the comic books Annie would read, all those impossibly proportioned characters running around in their long underwear, but I don't laugh anymore. The costumes make perfect sense now. My bodysuit has a slick black weave with enough give to let me move freely, but nothing that'll catch on a cornice or in someone's grip. The Thinsulate lining keeps me warm, even below zero. Black gloves, lined hood and runners complete the outfit. Makes me look like one of those B-movie ninjas, but I don't care. It gets the job done.

I draw the line at a cape.

I never read superhero comics when I was a kid— not because they seemed such a guy thing, but because I just couldn't believe in them. I had the same questions for Superman as I did for God: If he was so powerful, why didn't he deal with some real problems? Why didn't he stop wars, feed the starving in Ethiopia, cure cancer? At least God had the Church to do His PR work for Him— if you can buy their reasoning, they have any number of explanations ranging from how the troubles of this life build character to that inarguable catchall, "God's will." And the crap in this life sure makes heaven look good.

When I was growing up, the writers and artists of Superman never even tried to deal with the problem. And since they didn't, I could only see Superman as a monster, not a hero. I couldn't believe his battles with criminals; superpowered geniuses and the like.

I never believed in God either.

If my business wasn't so serious, I'd have to laugh to see myself wearing this getup now, climbing walls like a spider, all my senses heightened; faster, stronger, and more agile than a person has any right to be. It's like— remember the story of Gwion, when he's stirring Cerridwen's potion and it bubbles up and scorches him? He licks off those three drops, and suddenly he can understand the languages of animals and birds, he has all this understanding of the connections that make up the world, and he can change his shape into anything he wants— which proves useful when Cerridwen goes after him.

That's pretty well the way it is for me, except that I can't change my shape. What I've got are the abilities of the totem-heads the anima wore when they came to me. I just wish my fairy godmothers had made me a little smarter while they were at it. Then I wouldn't be in this mess.

I think I've figured out where they came from. I used to work for The Newford Examiner—I guess that makes me more like Superman than the Bat-guy, isn't that another laugh? And I guess I just blew any chance of maintaining a secret identity by revealing that much. Not that it matters. I was always pretty much a loner until I met Annie, and then most of our friends were hers. I liked them all well enough, but without our link with Annie, we've just kind of drifted apart. As for my family, well, they pretty much disowned me when I came out.

So I was working for The Examiner, and before you ask, it's true: We make up most of the stories. Our editor starts with a headline like "Please Adopt My Pig-Faced Son" and the writers take it from there. But sometimes we let other people make it up for us. You wouldn't believe the calls and letters that paper would get.

Anyway, a few months before Annie died, I find myself up in the mountains, interviewing this old hillbilly, woman who claims to have a fairy ring on her property— you know, one of those places where the Little People are supposed to gather for dances at night? I'd brought Annie with me because she wouldn't stay home once I told her where I was going.

The interview goes a little strange— not the strange that's par for the course whenever I've been out in the field interviewing one of our loyal readers with her own take on the wild and the wacky, but strange in how it starts to make sense. Maybe it's because Annie's with me and fairy tales are her bread and butter. I don't know. But the fairy ring is amazing.

It's deep in the woods behind the old lady's trailer, this Disneylike glade surrounded by enormous old trees, with grass that's only growing about an inch high— naturally; I check to see if it's been cut and it hasn't— and the mushrooms. They form a perfect circle in the middle of the glade. These big, fat, umbrella-capped toadstools, creamy colored with blood-red spots on them standing anywhere from a foot to a foot-and-a-half high. The grass inside the mushroom ring is a dark, dark green.

I know, from having read up on them before coming out to do the interview, that fairy rings are due to the growth of certain fungi below the surface. The spawn of the fungi radiates out from the center at a similar rate every year, which is how the ring widens. The darker grass is due to the increased nitrogen produced by the fungus.

None of which explains the feeling I get from the place. Or the toadstools. The last time I saw one like that was when I was still in Brownies— you know the one the owl sits on?

"Do you have to believe in the fairies to see them?" Annie asks.

"Land's sakes, no," Betsy tells her.

She's this beautiful old woman, kind of gangly and pretty thin, but still robust and a real free spirit. I can't believe she's pushing eighty-two.

"They have to believe in you," she explains.

Annie nods like she understands, but the two of them have lost me.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

I'm not even remembering to take notes anymore.

"It's like this," Betsy says. "You don't think of them as prissy little creatures with wings. That's plain wrong. They're earth spirits— and they don't really have shapes of their own; they just show up looking the way we expect them to look. Could be you'll see 'em as your Tinkerbells, or maybe they'll come to you looking like those Japanese robot toys that my grandson likes so much."

"But the fairy ring," I say. "That's just like in the stories..."

"I didn't say the stories were all lies."

"So..." I pause, trying to put it all together— for myself now, never mind the interview. "What is it that you're saying? What do these earth spirits do?"

"They don't do anything. They just are. Mostly they mind their own business, just like we mind ours. But sometimes we catch their attention and that's when you have to be careful."

Annie doesn't say anything.

"Of what?" I ask.

"Of what you're thinking when you're around them. They like to give gifts, but when they do hand 'em out, it's word for word. Sometimes, what you're asking for isn't what you really wants."

At my puzzled look Betsy goes on.

"They give you what you really want," she says. "And that can hurt, let me tell you."

I stand there, the jaded reporter, and I can't help but believe. I find myself wondering what it was that she asked for and what it was that she got.

After a while, Betsy and Annie start back towards the trailer, but I stay behind for a few moments longer, just drinking in the feel of the place. It's so... so innocent. The way the world was when you were a kid, before it turned all crazy-cruel and confusing. Everybody loses their innocence sooner or later; for me and Annie it was sooner.

Standing there, I feel like I'm in the middle of a fairy tale. I forget about what Betsy has just been telling us. I think about lost innocence and just wish that it doesn't have to be that way for kids, you know? That they could be kids for as long as possible before the world sweeps them away.

I think that's why they came to me after Annie died. They mourn that lost innocence, too. They came to me, because with Annie gone, I have no real ties to the world anymore, nothing to hold me down. I guess they just figured that, with their gifts, I'd head out into the world and do what I could to make things right; that I'd make the perfect fairy crusader.

They weren't wrong.

The trouble is, when you can do the things I can do now, you get cocky. And in this business, cocky means stupid.

Crouching there on the rooftop, all I can find myself thinking about is another bit of fairy lore.

"The way it works," Annie told me once, explaining one of her stories that I didn't get, "is that there's always a price. Nothing operates in a vacuum: not relationships, not the ecology, and especially not magic. That's what keeps everything in balance."

If there's got to be a price paid tonight, I tell the city skyline, let it be me that pays it.

I don't get any answer, but then I'm not expecting one. All I know is that it's time to get this show on the road.

4

It starts to go wrong around the middle of August, when I meet this guy on the East Side.

His name's Christopher Dennison and he works for Social Services, but I don't find that out until later. First time I see him, he's walking through the dark back alleys of the Barrio, talking in this real loud voice, having a conversation, except there's no one with him. He's tall, maybe a hundred-and-seventy pounds, and not bad looking. Clean white shirt and jeans, red windbreaker. Nikes. Dressed pretty well for a loser, which is what I figure he must be, going on the way he is.

I dismiss, him as one more inner-city soul who's lost it, until I hear what it is that he's saying. Then I follow along above him, a shadow ghosting from roof to roof while he makes his way through the refuse and crap that litters the ground below. When he pauses under some graffito that reads PRAISE GOD FOR AIDS, I make my way down a fire escape.

I want to tear out the heart of whoever spray-painted those words, but they're long gone, so I concentrate on the guy instead. I can see perfectly in the dark and my hearing's nothing to be ashamed of either. The wind changes and his scent comes to me. He's wearing some kind of cologne, but it's faint. Or maybe it's aftershave. I don't smell any fear.

"I just want to know how you do it," he's saying. "I've got a success rate of maybe one in thirty, but you... you're just shutting them down, right, left and center. And it sticks. I can tell when it's going bad. Can't always do something about it, but I can tell. The ones you help stay helped."

He's talking about me. He's talking to me. I don't get the impression he knows what I am— or even who I am and what exactly it is that I can do— but he knows there's something out in the city, taking back the night for those who aren't strong or old enough to do it for themselves. I've been so careful— I didn't think anybody had picked up on it yet.

"Let me in on the secret," he goes on. "I want to help. I can bring you names and addresses."

I let the silence hang for long moments. City silence. We can hear traffic from the street, the vague presences of TVs and stereos coming out of nearby windows, someone yelling at someone, a siren, but it's blocks away.

"So who died and made you my manager?" I finally say.

I hear his pulse quicken. His sudden nervousness is a sharp sting in my nostrils, but he's pretty quick at recovering. He looks above him, trying to spot me, but I'm just one more shadow in a dark alley, invisible.

"So you are real," he says.

A point for him, I think. He didn't know until I just confirmed it for him. How many nights has he been walking through these kinds of neighborhoods, talking to the night this way, wondering if he'll make contact or if he's just chasing a dream?

I make a deliberate noise coming down the fire escape and sit down near the bottom of it so that our heads are almost level. His heart rate quickens again, but settles fast.

"I wasn't sure," he says after I've sat there for a while not saying anything.

I've decided that I've already said enough. I'll let him do the talking. I'm in no hurry. I've got all night. I've got the rest of my life.

"Do you, ah, have a name?" he asks.

I give him nothing back.

"I mean, what do people call you?"

This is getting ridiculous.

"What?" I say. "Like the Masked Avenger?"

He takes a step closer and I tense up, but whether I'll fight back or flee if he comes at me, I'm not sure yet. The cat anima left me with a lot of curiosity.

"You're a woman," he says.

Shit. That's another bit of freebie information I've given him. I feel like just taking off, but it's too late now. I'm intrigued. I have to know what he wants from me.

"My name's Chris," he says. "Chris Dennison, I work with Social Services."

"So?"

"I want to help you."

"Why?"

He shakes his head. "Christ, you have to ask that? We're in the middle of a war and the freaks are winning— isn't that enough of a reason?"

I think of the child waiting in the dark for a boogieman that's all too real to come into her bedroom. I think of the woman whose last bruises have yet to heal, thrown across the kitchen, kicked and beaten, I think of the boy, victimized since he was an infant, turning on those weaker than himself because that's all he knows, because that's the only way he can regain any kind of self-empowerment.

It's not a war, it's a slaughter. Fought not just physically, but in the soul as well! It's about the loss of innocence. The loss of dignity and self-respect.

"What is it that you do to them?" he asks.

I don't know how to explain it. Using the abilities with which the anima have gifted me, I could literally tear the monsters apart, doesn't matter how big and strong they are— or think they are. But I don't. Instead, I pay them back, tit for tat.

But how do I do it? I'm not sure myself. I just know that it works. I look at this Boy Scout standing there, waiting for an answer, but I don't think he's ready to hear what I have to say, how everyone has a dreaming place inside them, a secret, private place that defines them. It's what I learned from Annie's stories. I just put that knowledge to a different use than I think Annie ever would have imagined someone could.

"I turn them off," I say finally. "I go into their heads and just turn them off."

He looks confused and I don't blame him.

"But how?" he asks.

I can tell it's not just curiosity that's driving him. What he wants is a weapon for his war— one that's more efficient than any he's had to work with so far.

"It's too weird," I tell him.

"I'm not a stranger to weird shit."

I'm not sure I want to get into wherever that came from.

"How did you figure out that I existed?" I asked to change the subject.

He takes the bait.

"I started to notice a drop of activity in some of our more habitual offenders." he says. "You know, cases where we're trying to prove that there's good reason to make the child a ward of the court, but we're still building up the evidence?"

I didn't, but I gave him an encouraging nod.

"It was weird," he goes on. "I mean we get more recants than we do testimony anyway, but when I investigated these particular cases I found that the offenders really had changed. Completely. I didn't make any kind of a connection, though, until I was interviewing a six-year-old boy named Peter. His mother's boyfriend had been molesting him on a regular basis, and we were working on getting a court order to deny the man access to the child and his mother as a forerunner to hopefully laying some charges.

"The mother was working with us— she was scared to death, if you want the truth, and was grasping at straws. She claimed she'd do anything to get out of this relationship. And then she suddenly retracted her offer to testify. The boyfriend had changed. He was good as gold now. Peter confirmed it when I interviewed him. He was the one who told me that he'd quote, 'seen a ninja angel who'd stolen away all of the boyfriend's badness.' "

I remembered Peter. He'd come into the room and caught me as I was getting up from his mother's bed, putting on my gloves. I almost bolted, but I didn't want to leave a different kind of night fear in the little tyke's head, so I told him what I'd done, couching the information in words I thought he'd understand. He'd been really brave and hadn't cried at all.

"He said he'd keep the secret," I say.

"Give the kid a break. He's only six."

I nod.

"Anyway," Chris says, "something clicked for me then. It seemed... well, impossible, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. What if there really was someone out there that could do what Peter had said his angel had done? I've been fighting the freaks for years with hardly anything to show for it. It's heartbreaking work."

I nod again. I've got a hundred percent success rate myself, but there's only so many places I can be at one time. I know all about heartbreak.

"I felt like a fool walking around out here, trying to get your attention, but I just had to know. And if it was real, I wanted a part of it."

I think of the anima that came to me all those long months ago.

"It's not something that can be shared," I tell him.

"But I can help, can't I?"

"I don't think that's such a good—"

"Look," he breaks in. "How do you figure out who to hit? I'll bet you just skulk around outside windows, hoping to get lucky. Am I right?"

Too right, but I don't answer.

"I can provide you with names and addresses," he says.

I remember him saying hat earlier. It's part of what drew me down from the rooftops to hear him out.

"You won't have to waste your time guessing anymore," he goes on, voice so damn eager. "With what I give you, you can go right to the known offenders. Just think of how much more effective you can be."

It's tempting. Oh, who am I kidding? It's another gift, as unexpected, but as welcome, as those the anima gave me.

"Okay," I tell him. "We'll give it a try."

I barely get the words out of my mouth, then he's dragging a folded sheet of paper out of the pocket of his jacket.

"These are just some of the worst, ongoing situations that we've got on file," he begins.

My heart sinks. There must be fifty names and addresses on that one piece of paper.

So many monsters.

5

The relationship works better than I think it might. I was working blind before, hanging around on fire escapes and ledges outside windows, crawling down from rooftops, listening, watching, until I got a fix on one of the monsters. And even then I had to be careful. Not every domestic argument leads to spousal abuse. Not every child, crying in the lonely dark, has been molested.

I'm also careful with the tips I get from Chris. I may have taken on the roles of judge and jury, but I always make sure that I'm really dealing with a monster before I step into his head and turn him off. But Chris's information is usually good. We don't just use what he's collected on his own, either. He takes what we need from all the files in his office, his and the other caseworkers', as well as from Children's Aid and the like, to avoid suspicion falling on him the way it might if all the monsters I dealt with came from his caseload.

If Chris could make the connection, then so could someone else— someone perhaps not as sympathetic to my particular working methods. I've no idea how I'd deal with prison. I think the gifts of the anima would make it a thousand times worse for me. I think I'd rather die first.

A few weeks into our partnership, Chris asks me what got me started with all of this. I don't know what to say at first, but then I just tell him that I lost a good friend which leaves him with the impression that it's revenge motivating me. I let him believe that, even if it's not exactly true. What killed Annie isn't something anyone can fight against.

It's funny. I never think of Annie looking as she did when she died. It's like my mind's dosed off the image of how frail she became toward the end. She was just skin and bones, a pale, pale ghost of herself lying there in the hospital ward. Chemotherapy had stolen that gorgeous head of hair, but she refused to wear a wig.

"This is who I am now," is all she'd say.

When I think of her, I see instead the woman I fell in love with. She could have been a model for one of those nineteenth-century painters whose work she so admired: Rosetti, Burne-Jones, Dixon— that crew. She was beautiful, but more importantly to me, she completed me. Until I was with Annie, I never felt whole. I was just an observer going through life, never a participant, which might be the reason I became a journalist.

I remember telling her that once and she just laughed.

"I don't think so, Jaime," she said. "If you really just wanted to report on life, you wouldn't have worked for The Examiner. I think, secretly, there's a novelist living inside you, just dying to get out. Why else would you be drawn to a job that has you making up such outlandish stories, day after day?"

Who knows what we secretly want— I mean, really, seriously want? I knew that with Annie I had everything I could ask for, so I had no more need for secrets. When I came out, it didn't raise an eyebrow among my coworkers. The only people who changed toward me were my family. Ex-family. Can you get a divorce from your flesh and blood? To all intents and purposes, I certainly have.

But that's okay. I was never close to them anyway. See, that's the real revenge motive that let me take the anima's gift: lost innocence.

Both my parents were alcoholics. I'm surprised I even survived some of the beatings I got as a kid. It was different for Annie. Instead of being beaten, her father started molesting her when she was in the cradle. The nightmare lasted until she was in her teens.

"What's scariest," she told me once, "is that I didn't even know it was wrong, It didn't feel right, but I never knew any different. I thought that was how it was in every family."

What are the statistics? I think it's something like two out of every three women have been sexually assaulted by the time they're in their twenties. Everything from being abused as children to being raped when they're older.

Lost innocence.

Somehow, Annie regained hers, but most people aren't that lucky. I know I never have.

But that's why I think of what I'm doing as something I'm doing for her. So many monsters, and I've barely made a dent in their numbers. I wish there was a way to get rid of them all in one fell swoop. I wish I could deal with them before the damage is done. It kills me that it's all ending for me before I've realty gotten started with my work.

See, by the beginning of July my savings finally run out and I begin to lose the amenities because I can't pay my bills anymore. The phone goes first, then the power. By the time I meet Chris, I've lost my apartment.

So I become a baglady superhero— do they ever deal with that in those comics? I know I'm obsessed, but I don't have anything else to do with my life. It was bad enough when I was on my own, tracking the monsters down by trial and error. I'd deal with one, maybe two in a week— three tops. But now, with Chris's help, I can hit that same number on a good night.

I'm proud of what I'm doing, but it's starting to take its toll. That little piece of myself I was losing every time I dealt with one of the monsters has escalated to where now it feels as though what I'm losing is falling off the way clumps of dirt can be shaken from a piece of sod. The empty patches inside me just keep getting bigger. It's as though my spirit is dissolving, bit by bit. I stare down at the anima residue I leave on their beds and want to pick it up and somehow stick it back onto me. I'm so wasted come morning now that I don't care where I sleep— on a park bench, in an alleyway, in some deserted building.

Chris offers to put me up, but I don't want to get that close to him. I let him buy me meals, though. Left on my own, I forget to eat half the time. When I do remember, I'm usually scrounging something from one of the monsters' kitchens— now there's something that really helps your appetite. God.

The cramps start in September, and I begin to get these sudden spells of weakness so often that even Chris notices the change. I mean, he can't see much of me, all clothed in black and hiding in the shadows most of the time, but what he can see tells him I'm not well.

"Maybe we should ease off a bit," he says.

"I'm fine."

"You look like shit."

I know. I caught a reflection of myself in a window on my way to meet him tonight. All the meat was gone, leaving just corded animal muscles over the bones. The real emptiness is inside.

"I tell you I'm fine," I repeat, trying to convince myself as much as him. "What've you got for me tonight?"

"Nothing."

I don't even realize that the growl's rumbling in my chest until I smell the sudden sting of his fear. I force myself to calm down, but he still backs away from me.

"I'm sorry," I say and I mean it.

He nods slowly, but he keeps his distance.

"Okay," I tell him. "We'll take a break tonight. Just give me one name."

I don't know why I'm pressing him like this. I could do it on my own. Skulk around until I found a monster. I might get lucky, you never know. But I think later that I want his complicity in this. I want someone to know what I'm doing— not to feed my ego. Just to remember me when I'm gone.

"One name," he says.

"That's all."

Chris sighs. He tries to talk me out of it for a little while longer, but finally gives in. One name and address.

"This one's a little weird," he says as he hands it over. "It came in from the guidance counselor at Redding High. Something about it being a sensitive case, but I couldn't find anything in the file to say why."

"That's okay. I can handle it."

Mistake— but I don't blame him.

6

Grant Newman is awake, only I don't realize it. I pull myself in through his window, third story, nice part of town, and creep soundlessly across the hardwood floor to where he's lying. He's alone in his bed. I scouted around earlier and discovered that he and his wife have separate bedrooms. Makes it easier for when he wants to pay little Susan a night visit, I guess.

I slip up onto the bed and he grabs me. It happens so suddenly that I just freeze up in surprise. Then when I try to fight him, I can't find the strength to break free. It's not that the anima's gifts have worn off; it's that I'm worn out. I've left too many pieces of myself behind in too many monsters' lairs. The shock of my sudden helplessness makes me feel dizzy.

"What the hell've we got here?" Newman says as I struggle to break his grip.

My heightened sense of smell makes his bad breath seem worse than it must really be. I know that smell. It's the way my old man used to stink before he took the belt to me.

I try to get my legs up between us so that I can kick him, but he rolls me over and pins me to the bed with his knees.

"Some kind of little ninja fuck," he says. "So what's the deal? Yukio getting tired of paying me off?"

He reaches for my mask until his gaze locks onto my chest.

"Jesus," he says. "Your boss must be really getting hard up if he's running woman assassins now."

I'm gaunt these days, just muscle and bone and the muscles aren't working tonight. But the body suit still shows I'm a woman. For some men, that's excuse enough for anything. Maybe Newman thinks he's in his private place and anything goes. For all I know we are in his private place, and I've just lost control of the situation.

Newman forgets about the mask, and reaches for the zipper of my suit instead.

"I've never fucked a ninja before," he says. "This'll be something to—"

I'm the wolf with its leg in a trap, the bear that's been shot, the puma that's been harassed until it has its back to the wall. Panic whips my head forward and I close my teeth on his hand, biting through fingers, straight to the bone. I'll give him this: He doesn't scream. But the pain makes him loosen his grip.

I whip up a leg from behind him and manage to hook it around his neck. I pull him back, off of me, heaving myself up to help the momentum. He falls backward out of the bed and I'm out of there. I almost lose it in the window frame, but my adrenalin lets me catch my balance before I go tumbling three stories down to the pavement below. By the time Newman gets to the window, I'm two floors above his apartment, spidering my way up the wall and onto the roof.

I make the jump from his building to its neighbor, and then over one more before I collapse. The roof's covered with gravel, but I can barely feel it digging into my skin. Cramps pull me into a fetal position, and I've got the shakes so bad that my teeth start to rattle.

It's a long time before I calm down.

It's even longer before I'm scratching at Christ's window.

As I tell Chris about what happened, I start to remember things I saw in Newman's bedroom, things I hadn't noticed when I'd scouted the place out earlier.

"It's going to be okay," Chris tells me.

"But he's seen me."

By which I mean: Now the monsters know I exist.

"Don't worry," Chris says. "What's he going to do? All he saw was a masked woman. It's not like he can recognize you. It's not like there's any way he can find you. He's probably more scared of you than you are of him."

"I don't think so," I say.

On Newman's night table: The police-issue .38 in its well-worn holster. The billfold with the shape of a badge worn into the leather.

"Newman's a cop," I tell Chris.

I remember more: What he was saying about payoffs.

"A crooked cop," I add.

"Oh, shit."

We both know what can happen. Newman can have an APB put out on me. He can make up any old story he likes about why I'm wanted and they'll believe him. Christ, he can tell the truth and I'll still have every cop in the city out looking for me. The police don't take kindly to anyone assaulting one of their own.

I'm bone-tired, but I know what I have to do. Chris tries to stop me when I get up and head for the window, but I turn around and look at him.

"What else can I do?" I ask him.

"You're in no condition to—"

He's actually a really race guy, even though he acts a bit too much like a mother. I can see why kids, even abused kids, like him and trust him.

"I know," I say. "But I don't have any choice."

I'm out the window before he can stop me. I make my way back across town to the roof of the building across from Newman's. The September wind's cold, but I can't feel it through my bodysuit. Don't need it to be chilled anyway. I've got apiece of ice inside me and that's what's making me shiver.

I know I should wait until I'm stronger, but I'm not so sure I'm ever going to get any stronger. I get the feeling that I'm wasting away, as inexorably as the cancer that took Annie.

I wait, crouching there on the rooftop, until I see the light in Newman's bedroom go off. I'm like a ghost coming down the side of the building and crossing the street. I don't feel strong, at least not physically. But I'm determined, and I hope that'll count for something.

7

When I get outside Newman's window, I realize he's not asleep. I can sense him sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, gun in hand, watching the window. He knew I'd be back.

So I go in through a window on the other side of the apartment. My entire being is focused on what I'm doing. Keeping silent. Staying strong— at least long enough to tidy up the mess I've made of things. His wife never stirs as I slip by her bed and out into the hall. I pass his daughter's bedroom and that helps. She makes a little moan in her sleep. The plaintive sound brings everything into sharper focus— why I'm here, what I'm doing— and makes it easier for me to concentrate on getting it over with.

Newman's attention is fixed on the window of his bedroom. He never hears me come in the door and sidle my way alongside the wall to where he's sitting. I'm sure of it. But something— sixth sense, cop smarts— has him turn just as I'm reaching for him.

"What the fuck are you?" he says as he brings up the gun. The bandage on his hand is a white flash in the dark.

Stupid, I think. I'm so stupid. I still wanted to make a try at keeping this clean. Step into his private place and shut him down instead of cutting him open. And maybe I can.

I grab his hand, the one holding the gun, skin to skin. Contact.

Everything stops. He can't shoot me, I can't claw him. We're locked in a space between our heads. Not his private place, but somewhere else. There's a sudden shift of vertigo, a crazy quilt strobing in my eyes, and then we're somewhere else again. It takes me a few moments to realize what's happened.

We're in someone's head, all right, but it's mine. This is my own dreaming place.

I've never tried to step inside when the monster was awake before. It's so easy to make the transition when they're asleep, dreaming. But Newman was so focused, his will so strong, that even though he couldn't have a clue as to what he was doing, he's managed to push me out of his head and then follow me back into my own.

I can't seem to do anything right tonight.

I try to take us back out again, but it's no good. I give Newman a shove and he goes sprawling. As soon as he hits the ground, that crazy-quilt-spinning starts up again. When it finally settles down, things have changed once more.

My dreaming place looks like the kitchen in the house where I grew up. I took for Newman, but he's gone. My father there in his place. He's standing there, weaving slightly from side to side, grinning at me, smelling like a brewery.

"Time to even the score," he says, slurring the words but not so much that I can't understand them.

He takes a step toward me, mad drunk gleam in his eyes, and I lose it. This is too much for me.

I never dealt with what happened to me as a child. I just left home as soon as I could. When I remade contact with my parents— before I told them I was gay— we all just pretended that all the drinking and screaming and beatings had never, happened. That was just the way it worked, I thought. Keep the family unit whole, no matter what the cost.

But I never forgot. And I never forgave. And seeing him like this now, it's like I've stepped right back into the past and all the years between were just a dream. Except I'm not powerless anymore. When he hits me, I don't have to take it. I don't have to cringe and try to hide from his fists. Not anymore. Not ever again.

With his first blow, all of my animal rage comes tearing through me and I lash back at him. My fingers are clawed, taloned, killing weapons. It's like I have rabies. I cut him down and I'm still slashing at him, long after he's fallen to the ground. Long after he's dead. There's blood everywhere. And there's this screaming that just goes on and on and on.

I think it's me screaming, I know it's me, until I fall out of my head and I'm back in Newman's bedroom. I'm crouched over his savaged corpse, snarling and growling, and then I realize how wrong I've been. It's not me screaming. It's not me at all.

I see her in the doorway, the monster's daughter. The screams stop when I turn to look at her, but then I see her go away. She folds away inside herself, going deeper and deeper, until there's just this blank-eyed child standing there, everything that ever animated her walled away against the night creature that snuck into her Dad's bedroom and tore him apart.

Doesn't matter what he did to her. That's gone, swallowed by the more horrible image of what's been done to him.

I stagger to my feet, but I don't even think of trying to comfort her. I almost fall through the window, trying to get out. And then I just flee. Run blind. I'll do anything to get rid of those emptied eyes, their blank stare, but they follow me, out into the night.

I know I'll carry them with me for the rest of my life.

When I finally stop running, the cramps hit me. I lie on my side and throw up. I'm still dry-heaving long after my stomach's empty, but I can't get rid of what's inside me that easily. The guilt's just going to lie there and fester and never go away.

8

Nothing helps.

It comes out that Newman was on the payroll of Yukio Nakamura, the boss of Little Japan's biggest Yakuza gang.

It comes out that not only was Newman taking graft, he was using his badge to help Nakamura get rid of his competition. And when the badge didn't provide intimidation enough, Newman was happy to use his gun.

It comes out that he beat his wife, abused his daughter.

By the time the investigation's over, half the Yakuza in Little Japan are up on racketeering charges and there's not one person in the city who has an ounce of sympathy for the monster. If they knew I'd killed him, they'd probably give me a medal.

But all I can focus on is that fact that his daughter's lost to the world now, locked up inside her own head, and I put her there. I tried to help, but I all I did was make things worse.

"You can't beat yourself over this," Chris said the one time I let him find me. "It's unfortunate what happened to the girl— an awful, terrible thing— but there's still a war going on. The freaks are still out there.

"You can't walk away from the fight now."

He thinks I'm scared, but that's not it. I'm not anything. All I can think of is that little girl and what I put her through, what I made her see.

Susan Newman didn't just lose her innocence. She had any hope of a normal life torn away.

"Do you need anything?" Chris asks. "Money? Food? A place to stay?"

I shake my head.

"Give this a little time," he says. "You're suffering from trauma too, you know."

I let him talk on, but I stop listening. I've regained my strength. I can leap tall buildings with a single bound again— or at least spider my way up their walls— but I don't have the heart for it anymore. I don't have the heart to step into anybody's dreaming place and then shut him down. And I certainly can't see myself killing someone again— I don't care how much he deserves it.

After a while, Chris stops talking and I walk away. He starts to follow, but finally gives up when I keep increasing the distance between us.

I don't wear my bodysuit anymore; I don't look like some dimestore ninja. I just look like any other homeless person, wandering around the street in clothes that are more than a few weeks away from clean, looking for handouts at the shelters, cadging spare change from passersby.

A month goes by, maybe two. I don't know. I just know it's getting really cold at night. Then late one afternoon I'm standing over a grating by a used bookstore, trying to get warm, and I see, in amongst the motley selection of titles that crowd the display window, a familiar cover and byline.

When the Desert Dreams, by Anne Bourke.

I've got two dollars and eighty cents in my pocket. I'm planning to use it to get something to eat later, but I go into the bookstore. The guy behind the counter takes pity on me and sells me the book for what I've got, even though there's a price of fifteen bucks penciled in on the right-hand corner of the front endpaper.

I leave, holding the book to my chest, and I walk around like that all night, from one side of the city to the other. I don't need to read the stories. I was there when they were written— almost a lifetime ago.

Finally, I start walking up Williamson Street, just trudging on and on until the downtown stores give way to more residential blocks, which give way to drive-in fast-food joints and malls and the 'burbs, and then I'm finally out of the city. The sun's up for about an hour when I stick out my thumb.

It's a long time before someone stops, but when this guy does, he's going my way. He can take me right up into the mountains. I find myself wanting to apologize for the way I look, for the way I smell, but I don't say anything. I know if I try to say anything more than where I'm going, I'm just going to break down and cry. So I sit there and hold my book. I nod and try to smile as the guy talks to me. Mostly, I just look ahead through the windshield.

I don't know what I'm expecting or hoping to find when I get there. I don't even know why I'm going. I just know that I've run out of other options.

Without Annie, I don't know where to turn. Only she'd be able to comfort me, only she'd be able to help me reclaim my dreaming place. I've had to shut myself off from what's inside me, because when I step into my private place, I get no solace now; when I dream, I have only nightmares.

What was my only haven is home to monsters now.

9

"Are you sure this is where you want out?" my ride asks.

There's something in the tone of his voice that tells me he doesn't think it's exactly the greatest idea. I don't blame him. We're out in the middle of nowhere, and Betsy's trailer looks deserted. The lawn's overgrown and thick with leaves. Her vegetable and flower gardens are a jungle of weeds. The trailer itself was never in the greatest shape, but now shutters are hanging loose and the door stands ajar. From the road we can see that a thick carpet of forest debris has already worked its way inside.

I guess I'm not really surprised. Betsy was an old woman. It's been over a year since I was here with Annie, and anything could have happened to her in that time. She could have moved. Or died.

I don't like to think of her as dead. There are some people who deserve to live forever, and although I only met her that one afternoon, I knew that Betsy was one of them. Eternal spirits, trapped in far too transient flesh.

Like Annie.

My ride clears his throat in case I didn't hear him. This guy's so polite. I was lucky it was him that stopped for me and not some loser who thinks with his dick instead of his heart.

Or maybe, considering, it was lucky for those losers. I've still got the anima's gifts; I just don't use them anymore.

"Yeah, I'm sure," I tell him and get out. "Thanks for the ride."

I stand by the end of Betsy's overgrown driveway and watch the car until it's out of sight. There's something in the air that calms me, smoothing all my nervous edges. No longer summer, not quite winter, everything just hanging between the two. I take it all in until I hear another vehicle coming up the road, then I dart into the woods, Annie's book clutched to my chest.

The glade doesn't look anything like I remembered it, either, but I know it's just because I'm here in a different season. The surrounding trees have all lost their leaves and everything's faded and brown. Except for the fairy ring. The toadstools still stand in their circle, the grass is still a deep green, and there's not a leaf or twig lying within the circle.

I know there's probably a sound, scientific reason why this is so, but I don't have access to the paper's morgue anymore to look it up, and besides, I've seen the anima. I'm more likely to believe that fairies are keeping the ring raked and tidy.

I stand there, looking at it for a long time, before I finally step into the ring. I lay Annie's book in the middle and sit down on the grass.

I don't know what I'm doing here. Maybe I thought I could call up the anima. Or Annie's ghost. But now that I'm here, none of that matters. All the confusion and pain that's sent my life into its downward spiral after I killed Newman just fades away. My pulse takes on the slow heartbeat of the forest. I close my eyes and let myself go. I can feel myself drifting, edging up on that dreaming place inside me that I haven't been able to visit for months because I know the monsters are waiting for me there.

I'm just starting to get convinced that maybe there is a way to regain one's innocence when I realize that I'm no longer alone.

It's neither the animal-headed fairy women nor Annie's ghost that I find watching me from the edge of the ring, but Betsy. I think for a minute that maybe she's a ghost, or a fairy woman, but then I see how frail she is, the cane she's used to get here, how her face is red from the effort she's made and her breathing is way too fast. She's as real as I am— maybe more so, because I don't know where I've been these last few months.

We don't say anything for along time. I watch her lean on her cane and slowly catch her breath. The flush leaves her face.

"I read about your friend," she says finally. "That must have been hard for you."

Tears well in my eyes and I can't seem to find my voice. I manage a nod.

"It's always hardest for those of us who get left behind," she says, filling the silence that grows up between us. "I know."

"You... you've lost someone close to you?" I ask.

Betsy gives me this sad smile. "At my age, girl, I've just about lost them all." She pauses for a heartbeat, then asks, "You and your friend— you were... lovers?"

"Does that shock you?"

"Land's sake, no. I left my own husband for a woman— though that was years ago. Folks didn't look on it with much understanding back then."

They still don't I think.

"I think it makes it that much harder when you love someone folks don't think you're supposed to and she dies. You don't get a period of mourning. Folks are just relieved that the situation's gone and fixed itself."

"But you still mourn," I say.

"Oh yes. But you have to do your crying on the inside,"

My eyes fill again, not just for Annie and me now, but for Betsy and her long-gone lover. Betsy looks like she's about to lose it too; her eyes are all shiny, and the flush is returning to her cheeks, but then she wipes her eyes on her sleeve and straightens her back.

"So," she says, trying to sound cheery. "What brings you back? Another story for your newspaper?"

I shake my head even though I know she's only being kind. She can see the state I'm in— I look like the homeless person I've become, not the reporter I was.

"Remember when you were telling me about fairy gifts?" I say.

She nods slowly.

I want to tell her about the anima and what they gave me. I want to tell her about the ninja suit and climbing walls and leaping from rooftop to rooftop, looking for prey. I want to tell her about the dreaming places, and what I did to Newman when I pulled him into mine. I want to ask what the fairy women gave her. But none of it will come out.

Instead I just say, "I like the idea of it."

"You did a lovely job writing it all up in your article," Betsy tells me. "It had a different... ring to it."

"As opposed to the stories The Examiner usually runs," I say dryly.

Betsy smiles. "I've still got it in my scrapbook."

That reminds me.

"I didn't think you—" were still alive. "— Still lived around here," I say. "When I saw the trailer..."

"After I had my stroke?" she says, "I went to live across the road with my friend Alice."

I don't remember there being a place across the road from hers, but when she invites me back for tea, I see that it's because the evergreens hide it so well. As we walk up the little dirt track leading to it, Betsy tells me how it's a step up for her. I look from the run-down log cabin to her, the question plain in my eyes.

"I doesn't have wheels," she explains.

I never do any of the things that might have brought me up here. I don't talk about the anima to Betsy or what their coming into my life has done to me. I don't talk about how they might have affected her. I don't meet the anima again; I don't see Annie's ghost. But when Alice's daughter drives me back to the outskirts of the city where I can catch a bus, I realize the trip was still worthwhile, because I brought away with me something I hadn't had for so long I'd forgotten it had ever existed.

I brought away some human contact.

10

In Frank Estrich's private place there's a small dog, trembling in the weeds that grow up along the dirt road where Frank's walking. The dog is just a mutt, lost and scared. You see them far too often in the country— some poor animal that's outlived its welcome in a city home, so it gets taken for a ride, the car slows down, the animal's tossed out—"returned to nature"— and the problem's solved.

Frank found a stray the summer before, but his dad killed it when Frank brought it home and tried to hide it in the barn. And then his dad took the belt to Frank. His dad does that a lot, most of the time for no other reason than because he likes to do it.

Frank always feels so helpless. Everybody's bigger than him: his father, his uncles, his brothers, the other kids. Everybody can rag on him and there's not a thing he can do about it. But this dog's not bigger than him.

Frank knows it's wrong, he knows he should feel sorry for the little fella because the dog's as unwanted as Frank feels he is most of the time, but I can see in his head that he's thinking of getting his own back. And if he can't do it to those that are hurting him, then maybe he'll just do it to the dog.

Doesn't matter how it cringes down on its belly as he approaches it, eyes hopeful, body shaking. All Frank can think of is the beating he got earlier tonight. Dad took him out to the barn, made him take down his pants, made him bend over a bale of hay as he took off his belt...

I've already dealt with the father, but I know now how that's not enough. The seed's still lying inside the victim. Maybe it'll turn Frank into what his father calls a "sissy-boy," scared of his own shadow; more likely it'll make Frank grow up no different from his father, one more monster in a world that's got too many already.

So I have to teach Frank about right and wrong— not like his father did; not with arbitrary rules and punishments, but in a way that doesn't leave Frank feeling guilty for what was done to him, in a way that lets him understand that self-empowerment has got nothing to do with what you can do to someone else.

It's a long, slow process of healing that's as hard for me to put into words as it is for me to explain how I can step into other people's dreaming places. But it's worth it. Not just for the victims like Frank that I get to help, but for myself as well.

What happened to me before was that I was wearing myself out. I was putting so much out, but getting nothing back. I was living only in the shadows, living there so long that I almost forgot there was such a thing as sunlight.

That's what I do, I guess. I still step into the monsters' heads and turn them off, but then I visit the dreaming places of their victims and show them how to get back into the sunlight. The funny thing is, that when I'm with someone like Frank and he finally gets out of the shadows, I don't leave anything of myself behind. But they leave something in me.

Dried blood and rose petals.

Bird bones and wood ash.

It's all just metaphor for spirit— that's what Annie would say. I don't know. I don't need to put a name to it. I just use it all to reclaim my own dreaming place and keep it free of shadows.