The Entropy of Bones Read online

  With closed eyes I found the dubstep beat in her hard footsteps. For all her pollutants she was still human. In my private darkness I saw her tempo, the energies that controlled and informed her. I saw the source of her poison, a womb modified to produce illness instead of life. My pity almost got me killed. I didn’t mean to let her get so close. I had to sidestep then send the venting energy I’d used to push Onyx into a wall directly into her womb. The crying damsel lay sprawled out on the mat unconscious, leaking out all her poisons.

  Next? I demanded from the crowd, controlling my breathing. There was no cheering. No applause. Just more vacuums of silence and cold. Two bruisers, non-Alters, came up from the darkness of the crowd with gloves on and removed my opponent. I stood in the middle of the ring for a few minutes then got loud again. What? Is that all you’ve got? Are you all afraid? At least Samovar had the balls to put his girl against me. What? I’ve got to break all your bones to find someone to fight me via proxy?

  Pardu looked even taller when she entered the ring. But I’d taken on bigger, stronger fighters. What I wasn’t prepared for was her trick. By now I knew they all had one. I should have known.

  Who do you fight for? the voice asked.

  “The Rat Queen of the House of Barda sponsors me.” She turned to face me.

  You gonna sport those shades the whole time? I asked.

  “No.” She took them off and two orbs, one white, one black, sat in the sockets where her eyes should have been. The nausea was immediate. I imagined it to be what seasickness felt like for people who hadn’t grown up on the water. This was her trick. I threw up hard. The blond behemoth was on me in a second. Now the crowd went wild. I spun under her and managed Ashes Nail Coffin to the back of her legs. Rolled to the other side of the ring, I focused through my sickness and was ready to go again when Pardu looked at my arm. It went limp. Even though I could move it, I didn’t have full range of movement. But I knew this trick. If I focused on what I couldn’t do, I’d be down. Again, Pardu used my confusion to close the distance, but this time my Yawning Rooster kick met her eyes.

  Keep them closed and keep this fair, was the warning I gave her as the giant tried to clear her eyes, keeping one hand out for defense as she did.

  “You’re going to die tonight,” the giant croaked.

  Probably. But by hands worse than yours. The giant cleared her eyes. Keep them closed, woman! She stared at me.

  I’d been stoking my internal fire. I used my hate, my frustration, my anger. It was white hot. I felt Pardu’s effect, poisoning my lungs with her eyes. I just stopped breathing as I ran at her. She’d spent too much time on her eyes and not enough on looking. At the last minute I whipped my hair. It had only taken a second for me to move a razor blade to the tip of one of my ponytails. To hear her screams as my hair went across the all-black marble in her face was more punishing than even she could have known. To her credit, she didn’t stop as her eyes deflated. She tried to punch and stare at me at the same time. I broke her arm and used my index finger to poke out the other eye. It bounced out of her face like a round stone on a bungee cord. She never screamed. The woman fell to her knees defeated, embarrassed, in pain.

  “Enough of this!” Poppy shouted, coming into the ring. For the first time, I saw her rattled, upset. I loved it.

  That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s handle this, I said, wiping eye guts off on my shorts.

  “Let’s,” Poppy said and smiled. The bitch turned her back on me and spoke to the darkness. “By the first applications and the laws of the uncreated, I invoke equity.”

  The usual murmurs and noises I expected from a crowd finally rose. She spoke in her language. It was so intense that I didn’t dare jump her from behind for fear of unseen consequences. Finally, after a full minute, Rice came into the ring. He stood with Poppy, confronting her, but still next to her. Nowhere near me.

  “Where’s the inequity?” Rice asked in their demented tongue.

  “With no provocation, this ward of the forgotten traitor stole the only voice of one of my servants,” Poppy said, pointing at me with full dramatic flair. I giggled about it until Rice looked at me with near apologetic eyes.

  “Is this true?” he asked in English to me. “Did you take someone’s voice?”

  So what? I said, getting into a fighting stance. It was beginning to dawn on me what they would attempt. None of them could get close enough to touch me. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “You hear?” Poppy complained to the sympathetic darkness again, their cries becoming louder. “Without regret this . . . this liminal, yes, for those of you unable to discern, this is what an unheeled liminal looks like . . . this creature damages my property, wounds an Elder and threatens to disrupt one of our oldest ceremonies. I withheld the wrath of my family because I thought Clan Montague sponsored her. But by her own words she allied herself with the Traitor.” Her patter, like ten thousand rat feet scraping across concrete, unnerved me almost as much as her full set of rat teeth. I caught her stare-down of Rice as she twisted her final blade. “Now, unless House Montague has allied itself with the traitor Narayana Raj, I demand equity!”

  “I’m so sorry,” Rice said gently as he reached out to me.

  For what? I said. I tried to say. I whispered. My Voice was going. Don’t you fucking dare! I shouted silently. Rice gave me a sheepish apologetic shrug as he opened his arms shoulder-length apart and played with a murky blue and gold energy between his palms. I’d never seen it before, but I knew, it was my Voice. Rice seemed more mournful than filled with regret; like he’d eaten the last cookie. How could I ever have loved him, wanted him? How did he have the ability to take my voice? These were the thoughts going through my head as my liminality was being taken from me. I looked in the corner and saw my blinded opponent and felt more kinship for her and the other Vish Kanya than I ever had before. Poppy wouldn’t have been able to stop grinning if she tried.

  “A.C.,” I muttered with the last of my Voice. The Brooklyn dub guru Dr. Israel’s song “Life in the Ghetto” instantly threatened to break all the speakers in the basement. My vindicating whirlwind coalesced into my favorite forgetful rectal irritant right next to me, six-shooters in hand. His first shot was perfectly aimed at Poppy. And as much as it pains me to give her any credit, the rat woman dodged the killing blow and managed to get a bullet in her clavicle for her trouble. Her shock that a bullet actually had the ability to hurt her was almost worth it.

  “You get Rice. I’ve got Poppy. Don’t hold back,” A.C. said with a smile. I let the three steps it took me to get to the side of the ring fill me with the rhythm of life. Looking into the darkness of the crowd full of Alters, I didn’t know fear or anger. Just challenge. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have a voice, I had a chance to just fight. To just let go.

  Vish Kanya or Alter, it didn’t matter, I struck, sometimes using the entropy of the bones, sometimes finding the generativity of the music. Some ran from me, others fell into me, others attacked head-on. I was quicker than usual, dispatching all comers in seconds. I thought I was just hyped until the gust of wind from the north side of the room reminded me who was on my side. A.C. was lending me some of his speed like he had on the way to the ranch.

  That effect ended after about five minutes. While I had an impressive wounded and worried body count, I hadn’t laid eyes on Poppy or Rice. But the dying extra speed had me worried. I couldn’t see A.C., which meant I couldn’t call out to him, without a voice. The music began to fade as well, and so did the lights. A Vish Kanya was able to land a blow on me. I started backpedaling. Two Vish Kanya and five Alters surrounded me. I breathed deep, but then was sucked into the air and dropped hard in the middle of the arena. A second later A.C. came falling back next to me from the darkness. He landed as though he’d been hit. I thought his sword had blood on it but I couldn’t tell for sure. My vision and hearing began to degrade. But through the haze I heard familiar nonsense words.

  “I truly do hate Nordeen!”
A.C. said, trying to laugh. Alters and Vish Kanyas tried climbing into the ring but Wind Boy lived up to his name and generated a cyclone that kept them out and us safe in the middle. At least temporarily.

  “Time to go.” A.C. pantomimed grabbing the air about twelve times before he actually managed to catch what he was aiming for, a wisp of air. He circled it in his hands over and over again, rotating his hips as though he were spinning a hula-hoop. I barely understood what was going on, I was barely conscious, but I could tell it was taking all of his energy.

  Just as a small hole in the middle of the air began to open and started making a sucking sound, the debilitating chanting of Nordeen got louder. He rose to the ring with Poppy and Rice behind him. The old man’s chanting broke the cyclone in one place. A.C. raised one six-shooter at our enemies but a team of rats came from behind them, going for me. He shot them all in quick time. His other hand A.C. kept trained on the small portal. He threw one of the six-shooters through the portal and used the now free hand to push the trio back with his wind. What he did next scared and confused the hell out of me.

  “Get up and find your bliss, girl!” he shouted as he picked me up. I tried to protest but I had no voice. I was too weak to fight back and I never realized how strong A.C. was. He actually threw me through the portal. Soon after, he must have thrown the other six-shooter and the sword because when I woke I was surrounded by the weapons at the weed brothers’ ranch. Alone.

  Chapter Sixteen: Akashic Records

  I screamed. Nothing happened. Anywhere. Not in the real world, not in the invisible place where my voice usually echoed. I had no effect. Nothing. I threw myself on the ground, grabbed fistfuls of dirt, sobbed, and dug my face into the earth, screaming all the time. Nothing. I lost control of my breath, taking huge drags of air and still not feeling like I was getting enough. My heart started taking pot shots at my rib cage. I started shaking all over. I felt myself on fire one minute, then freezing the next. This was Narayana leaving all over again. Had I been poisoned? One of the Vish Kanya had gotten me. The world began to lose focus as I measured one other option.

  Maybe you’re just panicking like a little bitch. It was my own internal voice but it felt like a stranger’s. And that annoyed me. Annoyed me that my own sense of self was compromised. Irritated me that I might be mistaking self-inflicted wounds for enemy fire. I was disgusted with myself for letting A.C.’s sword and guns lie languishing in the ground. The dirt caked on my shorts and my face began to embarrass me. But my body was still flipping out.

  I demanded order from my lungs, steady breaths. I gave up my sight and focused on my balance. With eyes closed I sat on the ground with my back erect and relaxed. I let the heat flashes come and go as they wished. Same with the shivers. Soon I was convinced that I had been panicking and not poisoned. I let the embarrassment of that slide with last of the cold shivers. No time to be embarrassed. I had work to do.

  No voice didn’t mean I was helpless. I ran to Sheep Tears hoping I’d find Dale or Roderick. Both were gone. But the black sack was there. I grabbed it and was about to make my way back to the house when I went by the rock, right where I had landed. Despite the wind, A.C.’s joint and the lighter rested on the top of it, unmoving. I’d been so discombobulated I’d forgotten his words. He told me to find my bliss. He’d been lightweight pushing his smoke on me literally since we first met. And just as he’s about to be captured by Rice and his ilk, he doesn’t tell me to run and get weapons, doesn’t send me as far away as possible and say “stay safe.” He tells me to find my bliss.

  It took a lot to get my action-oriented ass to not move. To think for a second. It took more to put the bag of bombs down. It took so much more to actually pick up that weirdly familiar smelling joint. It was only when I finally lit it that I remembered where I’d encountered its scent before. It was the smell of the fungus rock. Not the rock, the fungus itself. That was the last thing I thought before I took a hit and left my body.

  It wasn’t jarring or scary. More like I took off my clothes and slipped into a warm pool of water. I lost nothing in the transition. In fact, I felt like I gained. Like a million and one voices sang my body into being at once. I felt the unified effort of all creation in the formation of the moment and me. I was expanded outside of my body, and then reformed without physical limitations on a dark gray plain that had no horizon as far as I could see. My physique was made of a forever-moving ocean of fire, fed by a forever-blowing breeze. I was constantly churning but I wasn’t agitated. It didn’t hurt. It felt more like a natural consequence; an honest expression of who I was. Every move I made, every step, every self-explorative touching of this body made a sound, like low notes from an upright bass or cello. It came to me then that I was at the place where my Voice originated.

  From my right hand side I heard a symphony and knew it was a new body. I couldn’t help reveling in the coordination and rhythm in the movement of the body. My own movements had a pure representative beauty, like when you know a musician is putting everything they have into their music. But the approaching body played with subtleties, melodies, and harmonies with such casual ease, it screamed expertise. When I turned to look at him, he was as surprised as me.

  “You are not who I was expecting,” DJ Jah Puba, the Little Kid’s friend, all grown up, said without a hint of malice. And far more attractive.

  “Fair enough,” I said, shocked not by the sudden appearance of my voice—somehow I knew I would be able to speak—but more at the reformation of my body into a semblance of flesh. “I sure as hell wasn’t expecting you.”

  “It’s been a while, Chabi.” He smiled kindly at me, coming closer. He was taller, with broad shoulders, older than me, and barely recognizable as the sullen mop of a wannabe DJ. “Most people call me Mico now.”

  “You’re Mico?” I shouted and heard the plane of existence echo out its version of hallelujah. “Ok, time out for a quick. Where are we? What is this place?”

  “This is a location that rests in knowledge as opposed to time and space. You get expert enough in any discipline and you have access to everyone else who has had that level of expertise. It’s called the Akashic record.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not expert in anything . . .” As Mico was speaking, I felt my imagination literally change the landscape around us. I imagined a giant library and so a massive version of the Mill Valley Public Library formed in front of us. In reality it was the first library my mother ever took me to. It was a well-funded three-story building surrounded on three sides by redwoods. As a child I always imagined subbasements of books organized in antique stacks that went on for miles. But in the Akashic records, it was infinitely larger, stretching out in all directions farther than the eye could see. Mico didn’t seem bothered by it.

  “Yeah, me neither,” he said, and formed a large sitting room with leather couches and paintings with impossible colors on the walls the same way I formed the library. “But all those experts need a common language. That’s what your voice is. You speak with the voice of expertise. As a result you have access to this place.”

  “Ok, then how did you get here?”

  “There’s a woman named Samantha . . .” he started.

  “Another liminal, like me?” The continuous chorus of voices harmonizes when I say liminal; it would be annoying if it weren’t pitched perfectly. “A.C. said she could access the elusive realms. What does that mean? Is that where we are now?”

  “Yes. This is like the reading room of the Akashic records. When you partook of the Manna Elohim, the joint, it told me you’d be here. Samantha has the ability to transport anyone she has sex with to these sorts of places . . .”

  “Has sex with . . . ?” My body giggled but grown-up DJ Jah Puba ignored it.

  “Chabi, where’s my friend? Where’s A.C.?”

  My body resonated sadness before I could speak. I saw Mico’s smooth, fine face so chisel-hard, bracing for bad news.

  “He’s alive,” I managed to pull out without
sobbing. “But Rice and the others. Poppy and the liminal guy . . .”

  “Nordeen.” For the first time I heard silence from all around.

  “Yes. They caught him. I swear I didn’t leave him. He pushed me out. I was going to get him.” Instinctively I felt for A.C.’s guns and was surprised to find them on me. I pulled one out of the holster.

  “I believe you. Now please put that thing back in its holster.” I hadn’t seen him move, but Mico was standing over me, his soft hand gently but firmly pushing down on my gun hand.

  “I’m just saying he wouldn’t have given these to me if . . .”

  “Chabi, it’s ok. I know you wouldn’t hurt him.” He sat back down, put his hand over his face and lay back. Spirit body or not, I could tell he was tired. And not from our conversation. I know combat fatigue when I see it. “But you’re going to have to let him go.”

  “How’s that now?” I shot up.

  “A.C. went back in time, to your time, in order to save us. The Alters had gained power over us. We lost. I lost . . .”

  “Yeah, A.C. told me. They had compromised you . . .”

  “I broke from my truth.” I didn’t bother asking, but my body voice made it clear I was confused. He started again. “Tried to write a new truth. Tried to manipulate earlier versions of me. They found me . . .”

  “At the Naga Suites,” I said, beginning to understand. “The Little Kid wanted you to DJ for them.”