Jonah Read online

  Jonah rubs his forehead. “This is the most confusing dream I have ever—”

  “Of course, it is. That's the JO limb. John? Jonah? O is a very old, stable marker, but J is a whimsy, an afterthought, split off the I. Sometimes pretends to be a T, or doubles as E or Y. Very fickle. But JO is a good service limb. Subconsciously, maybe you thought you could bypass your karma by changing your name. This is one of those sacred ironies. By adding Quiller you strengthened the job you are going to do. This time around, no messy business inside the belly of a whale, no humiliation before a king.”

  Jonah bursts out laughing. “Oh, right! I'm a reincarnation of that Jonah!”

  “Actually you are a cross-limber, grafted on the RO limb. On Earth, women are the carriers. An aunt on your father's side thought she recognized in you a potential for prophecy. However miscalculated her speculation, you were stamped and grafted into the Rose clan. Shows in reverse in your daughter's name. Coral? But Jonah? This time, all you have to do is a little quill work for the Provocative Quill clan. Congratulations. You declined the life of a swashbuckler in favor of the divine. Very commendable.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Erianthmer. Silver Arrow clan.”

  “Erianthmer…sounds like an angel's name.”

  “Angels are of an entirely different order.” Erianthmer flutters his long fingers. “Way, way up there…”

  “But you don't sound angelic.”

  “Probably sound like you. Curious thing about these projections. What you see and hear are distortions. Something to do with how your brain processes sound and light waves. It's a wonder you can see or hear me at all. Some can't.”

  “You do this a lot?”

  “No, no. I'm talking the history of projections. First time for me.”

  “Projections…are you real?”

  “Are you? It's a bilocation thing. Don't try to understand.”

  “You took my pencil.”

  “Big deal. When we transport a human being through the shield, then we're talking something to crow about.”

  “You keep saying ‘we’…”

  “Silver Arrow and Cedar Bow clans on Geshlama.” Erianthmer twists, points left, upwards, makes an arc. “Sort of up-east of Earth.”

  “A planet?”

  “Don't try to understand. Geshlama exists in a different time/space loop. Picture two circles overlapping a little. It's like the toy you call a Slinky. In the zones in the overlap, there are spirals, like on the Slinky. But you stretch it out, it's one long wire, am I right?”

  “Time is a Slinky toy?” Jonah wonders if Merl Betsyboy put something in the pizza he bought last night.

  Erianthmer starts talking all kinds of gibberish about time loops, warp tunnels, energy matrixes, whirlpools, vortexes…Jonah is nodding off. Jerks his head when he hears, “She's human…she's not human.”

  “HUH?”

  Erianthmer tells a long story about how this woman fell to Earth. Biggest fish story Jonah has ever heard, awake or dreaming.

  “When she fell, she went into deep cover. The fact that we can project to you, and not her, is one of those sacred ironies. The range of our will is long, wide, and deep, but there are longer, wider, and deeper wills acting above our sphere of experience. As I said, the woman is of the Indigo Veil lineage. She has no Earth history, Jonah. When she came here, she fell under the jurisdiction and protection of Zalos. Don't ask. This woman is also one-third Rose lineage, a bloodline indigenous to Earth. However, with no personal history here, she cannot survive without guidance across the deep of her prior experience, so to speak. As best as we can determine, this has never happened before, an Indigo Veil venturing to Earth directly from Geshlama. Her living ancestors created around her a kind of protective construct of energy that we cannot penetrate. If we could, so could the archons. People on Earth have, over time, developed natural shields protecting them from direct influence of the archons, but this woman did not have that.”

  “Uh…archons?”

  “Bogeymen, demons, bad guys. So much activity up there—” Erianthmer waves his arm; sparks fly, “you wouldn't believe.”

  “Oh, yeah, UFOs.” Jonah chuckles.

  “You laugh. Forms an amusing picture in my mind, you swinging off a UFO, creaming your pants. But you don't have to go there, Jonah. Not if you do the right thing by this woman.”

  “How'd this woman get to be my problem?”

  “How do I know so much about you? Books say as a JO-deflect-RO-graft, you are obligated to work as a messenger. No doubt this is the magnet between you two. Our woman is a natural scribe. Her warrior father keeps track of her—”

  “Oh, good…a warrior father!”

  “She has two fathers. Second father is only a donor. He was the Rose supplier. I sometimes think this was planned. Of course, I would never say that aloud in front of Therin.”

  “Should I be curious?”

  “Nah, forget Therin. You cooperate, you won't ever have to meet him. A JO-RO-PQ convert up against a full-fledged Cedar Bow? Wouldn't be fair. As I was saying, the word is, our woman is going to try and fulfill a task for her living ancestors. When they activate her, she's liable to freak. For sure, she'll feel disoriented.”

  “She…this woman…what's her name?”

  “Don't know.”

  “Oh, that's rich,” Jonah says.

  “It's an Indigo Veil thing, not to name a fairchild before the age of eighteen. She was eleven years old when she fell.”

  Jonah grins, rubs his hands together. “I'll know her by the rose tattoo on her thigh.”

  Erianthmer winces. “Jonah…it’s not in your best interest to think of her that way. She's here today, gone tomorrow. Don't forget, Brother—you are going to help her go home.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  Erianthmer taps the book on his lap. “She is going to try and fulfill her task. She can't help it. It's her nature. But she's going to have trouble…because, Jonah? We have her indigo veil. And as you have witnessed here tonight, we cannot transport anything through the shield to you. But we are very close to breaking the codes on the reverse transportation problem. Soon as we do, we are going to be here, quivers, bows, and arrows, to transport her home to Geshlama.

  “In the meantime, you are going to help her. You are going to protect her. This will be your chance to be her hero. But don't let it go to your head. You care about our woman, you will be releasing her from the first moment you meet her.”

  “What if she wants to stay?” Jonah tosses his mane. “I'm not exactly a dog.”

  “She'll break your heart. Some part of her will always be yearning for home. You won't be able to become simpatico, like you can with a woman born on Earth. And anyway, if we don't transport her home, we figure the Veils will before the fires start.”

  “Fires!”

  “Hell's bells. You don't know about the end of the Great Cycle? Happens every 25,776 years. Precession of the equinoxes? Astronomy 101. Evolution TX.”

  Jonah moans; thumps his knuckles against his forehead. “One of those millennial nightmares.”

  “You'll think nightmare when the fires start.”

  “Definitely a New Age nightmare.”

  “A nightmare takes your pencil, sure. Show a little respect for empirical evidence, Brother. Smooth out. Might not be a serious conflagration. Enough people realize you need to increase the light and speed up the vibrations, Oljato will pass you by. Then you get only falling stars, windstorms, small brush fires. Maybe an asteroid nicks the surface.”

  “Oljato?”

  “Comet in the Taurids, in an Earth-crossing orbit, headed your way. Our concern is this. Gently or violently, the cycle is going to end soon. Our woman has to be gone before the cycle closes, because it would not be good for her to get caught in Earth's reincarnational orbit. An Indigo Veil needs to spend a full lifetime on Geshlama before he or she is ready for a round on Earth. You want to be her hero, you do the right thing. You protect her, you help her, you s
ee she gets home.”

  “Let me run this by, see if I've got it,” Jonah says. “This veil-rose woman is going to show up on my doorstep. She's some kind of alien I'm supposed to help get back to her home planet. Somehow my prayer for a wife caused this, but I'm not supposed to marry her. By some twist of fate, probably with the help of that old trickster, Coyote, this woman who is not the answer to my prayers just happens to be beautiful, something I'm supposed to ignore. I'm supposed to suppress my God-given natural urges and be a noble hero. Have I got it?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Erianthmer? On Earth, the hero always gets the beautiful woman.”

  The bass guitar sound thumps again, rattling the venetian blinds.

  As if jerked on a puppet's string, Erianthmer rises in the air. He bends down, grabs the potted cacti off the top of the bureau. “Speaking of empirical evidence, you mind—?”

  “You want my cactus?”

  “Thanks…”

  The amber light is spreading out.

  “Jonah—sorry to do this, but it's important you do not consciously remember this event.”

  Erianthmer strikes the air with his free hand. A beam of red light streaks across the room and zaps Jonah between his eyes. He flops over.

  It is dark again.

  Jonah sleeps.

  Chapter B (2)

  The next morning, Jonah is jarred awake by the jangle of the telephone. He snatches up the receiver. “Must be important,” he growls. Clock reads five-thirty! Feels like he slept only a couple of hours. The top of his nose hurts. Scowling, he rubs the spot.

  “You drunk?” The caller is Frame Swenson. “It's 11:44.”

  “My clock says—oh, wow…Frame—!”

  “I'm here, Jonah.”

  “Something really weird happened last night. Oh, wow! There's a blister on my finger. And…” He stumbles out of bed, yanking on the phone cord as he crosses the room. “Cactus Jo gave me is gone!” He touches his overalls on the stuffed chair. “And my pants are hot!”

  “Jonah…should I come over?”

  “No, no…I'll see you at ten.” Most mornings, around ten, regulars congregate at the Talk for coffee and quarrel.

  “I repeat Jonah—it is eleven-fifty-two. I advise you get a new clock.”

  “Eleven—where's Coral?”

  “Laurie was wondering.”

  Frame's wife, Laurie, usually cares for Coral in the afternoons after kindergarten.

  “Catch you later, Frame.”

  Jonah grabs a pair of overalls off a hook in the closet, wrestles them on; pulls a thermal shirt over his head.

  Coral is outdoors, in the backyard. It's a warm, breezy day; the sky is marble gray with patches of blue shining through.

  “You decide to skip school?”

  “It's Saturday!” Her eyebrows crinkle with the lie.

  “Uh-huh, and tomorrow is Christmas.”

  Coral is good at entertaining herself, today building something—a castle for her Barbie dolls?—with the wood chips left over from the tool shed he threw up last spring.

  “Thunder's being mean to Tuxedo again!” she tattles.

  “I think it's love, Darlin'.”

  The screeches and rumbles of love are sounding behind the studio. Johanna Vanderbond, the woman who designated Jonah caretaker of the property before she died in ‘96, built the cottage as an art studio. Frame Swenson used to display her desert scenes in his gallery, the Whistler, alongside the art of Plastow, Wheeler, Morse, and the other local greats. Jo was a pretty good painter, but revenues from the rents on the triplex she owned and the Coffee Talk were her main source of bread. Lucky for Jonah, she needed help when he came to town, penniless. Not only gave him a job, took him and Coral into her home. The fact that Jo was a lesbian made for a congenial partnership, both at work and home.

  Now the studio is crammed with cast-off furniture and boxes of crap Jonah should have hauled to the dump long ago. Where did the time go?

  “Did you eat breakfast?” he asks Coral.

  “Those chocolate donuts. They were kind of hard, so I broke them up and poured milk on them. You forgot to buy Honey Bunches, Daddy.”

  “Help me with an experiment, and we'll go to the store.” Inside, he grabs the broom; Coral follows him to his bedroom. “The experiment is, I have to get those overalls outside, on the end of the broom. If I drop them, I lose. If you help me by thinking winner thoughts, we'll do McDonald's for dinner.” Coral claps her hands. “But whatever you do—don't touch the pants, Darlin'. That would mean no Macs for six months.”

  Jonah is outside and down the back stairs, the overalls hanging off the end of the broom, when an old grayish green Ford towing a U-Haul pulls into the driveway behind the house.

  “Daddy! You're dropping—!”

  He yanks up the broom. The overalls slide down the handle, settling against his hands. The pants are still warm. Jonah shakes them down mid-broom, and walks swiftly over to the trash can. “Lift the lid, Coral Kay,” he says in a stern tone she always responds to immediately. He deposits the overalls in the can, and replaces the lid.

  The woman at the wheel of the old Ford looks vaguely familiar. The car stops shy of the back steps. After the driver kills the engine, the car shudders and coughs a fireball out the tailpipe.

  Now he recognizes her. Zion Cromwell. He's sure it's her. He met her at Jo's funeral. Long blue-black hair, ivory skin, blue blazing eyes. Today her hair is half straggling, half piled on her head. Definitely Zion. He wouldn't forget that face. When she came to the funeral, she was driving a sporty Chrysler. What the hell happened?

  She removes her sunglasses, sets them on the dashboard, climbs out of the car, unsmiling; shuts the door. She looks at Jonah, looks at Coral Kay, looks at the broom. He swishes the broom over the dirt.

  “Just tidying up a bit,” he says.

  His joke does not invoke a smile.

  Coral Kay tugs on his pants leg and whispers loudly, “Daddy—what's the matter with the lady's eye?”

  For reasons Jonah is sure no animal behaviorist could explain, Thunderpaws has chosen this moment to take on Rufus, the hummingbird. Jonah, Coral, and the woman stare as the cat leaps, paw in the air, swiping at the hummingbird. Rufus dives and beaks the cat on the neck. Thunderpaws yowls, rolls over in the dirt, then speeds toward the front of the house. The hummingbird flies toward the woman, hovers, as if to get a good look at her, then flies into the apple tree next to the studio.

  “Rufus,” Jonah says, pointing at the tree. “Heckling Thunderpaws.”

  “You name birds?”

  “Just that one. Seems to have it in for the Paws. Thunderpaws. The cat.”

  Still no smile. Coral is right. The skin around Zion's left eye is swollen, purple and yellow. Her husband do this? Jonah snaps his eyes, wishing he didn't have to see this, feel this. Should he say something?

  She's looking over the property. Recently, the county inspector, that old rooster Owen Jergen, said next time he was going to slap a fine on Mahoney for failing to clean up the crap. Apple Valley was trying to be a decent town for the tourists. Would Mahoney invite guests into a house that looked like a pig's sty? To which speech Jonah responded with his spiel having to do with natural landscaping, and the putting on of airs for a bunch of foreigners. Owen spit on the ground.

  It would be a lie to say that Jonah had balked on cleaning up the yard on principle. It was sport, seeing how much he could agitate Jergen, shy of a fine. Now, seeing the property through Zion Cromwell's eyes, he feels childish and embarrassed.

  The modest frame-and-brick ranch-style house sits on a sandy knoll. From the back of the house at night, westward, you can see the lights of the town, and a zillion stars when skies are clear. Jo bought the place in ‘55, about five acres, and planted a few trees: blue spruce, green apple, a sycamore up close to the house. The rest of the property is rocky and hilly, covered with scrubby black-brush and a smattering of pinion, juniper, and cedar. Mrs. Cromwell is taking in d
etails, truck engine parts, stack of old tires, roll of rusted fencing, weed-encumbered garden, broken toys in the dirt, and all the other junk. She glances at the shed he built. He's proud of the shed, but supposes it doesn't make up for all the rest.

  Zion Vanderbond Cromwell walks over to the back stairs, sinks down, hugs her knees, and bows her head. Her whole body is shaking, and you can hear the sobs.

  Jonah is gripping the broom.

  Coral Kay runs up the stairs into the house. The screen door bangs. She runs out with her favorite Barbie doll. The door whaps behind her. She sits down next to Zion and offers the doll to the woman. The doll with the ratty blond hair, half gone since Thunder cuffed it. Jonah notices that the doll is dressed in wrinkled blue jeans and pink shirt, same as the outfit Coral is wearing. Does the kid do this every day? Dress her doll to match? He wishes he had taken a brush to Coral's honey-colored hair. Wild and free!

  Jonah walks closer. “Um, are you hungry? Can I fix you some tea, coffee—something for that eye? An ice pack?”

  Without looking away from Coral, Zion shakes her head.

  “I'll be inside,” is all Jonah can think to say. He walks up the stairs, into the house, shuts the door, leans against it, expels a wad of air. His knees feel weak. He pulls out a chair, slumps down at the table, resting the broom across his thighs. The owner of Jo's Abode is sitting on the back doorstep. With a black eye.

  Before she died, Jo mentioned her “favorite niece” a few times, but never elaborated until she explained her will to him. She was going to bequeath the property on Crabapple Drive to Zion…who wasn't technically her niece.

  He would have noticed Zion at Jo's funeral even if she wasn't beautiful. Her looks were very different from the Vanderbonds, all blond and big-boned with ruddy complexions. After Jo and her parents died, the remainder of the Vanderbond tribe moved away. Zion was never close to any but Jo and her mother, so she was alone in the world now—except for her husband—let's don't forget that!

  The surprise of learning about Zion was mild compared to the shock Jonah had experienced, hearing that not only was Jo leaving him her business, she was also designating him as an official kind of caretaker of the property, for as long as Zion held title. He and Coral Kay could live here indefinitely for the cost of taxes and insurance, and he had first option on buying the place, if Zion ever wanted to sell. The catch was—he might someday have to caretake the long-absent niece, herself. Jo could see he wasn't exactly enamored with the idea.