PSI-4
“Who are you?” Calliope said. She’d seen Erik being other people before. That was his eyepatch and his underwear and his body, but he wasn’t wearing any of it. Even his face was wrong. He looked older — not wrinkly or anything, older on the inside.
He gathered the blanket around him and held it closed against his chest, as if making certain his bathrobe was keeping him modest. He tipped her a slight bow. “I’m Auntie Enora. We haven’t met before, but don’t worry, child. I’m not here to hurt anyone and I’m going to be quick. Is that coffee? Excuse me, little green boy, do you mind?”
Tommy hesitated for a moment, selected a glass from the worktable at random and then sniffed it. He offered it with a half-shrug. “It might be kinda, uh, off. Ma’am.”
“That’s all right, I’m not really expecting payment. I’m just here as a courtesy to the boy’s mother.”
“Oh, no,” Seth said.
Erik peeked politely under the worktable and shook his head. “Oh, Mister Seth. We do seem to keep meeting like this, don’t we?”
Cerise had thudded up several stairs and was about to inform the rest of the household, as a courtesy, that the little boy with the weird head had summoned a god and everyone ought to take cover, when she suddenly found herself coming back down without saying a word. “Oh, gods, I’ve heard about this,” she muttered.
“Now Miz…” Auntie Enora trailed off. “Or Mister… Look, whichever one you prefer, this is bad enough as it is and if you get the boy’s uncle involved it’s not going to help anyone. Mister Mordecai and I have a history. I’m not going to hurt you, but I’m not going to let this get out of hand. So just give up and sit a spell like poor Miz Hyacinth.” Erik tilted his head and smiled a mystified smile at Hyacinth. “You know, child, I don’t really mind about the mice. I understand. You do your best.” Erik sipped the coffee and made a grimace. “But I don’t understand why someone would tart up a perfectly good cup of coffee to taste like pumpkin pie!”
“We needed to distract them to get in and I got Mordecai to empty the spice cabinet,” Cerise said numbly.
“Well, I suppose it was for a good cause but it’s a shame,” said Auntie Enora. She sighed. “It’s going to have to do, Mister Seth. Erik told me what happened and I told him we’d sneak it like Alba used to.”
Seth made a noise that might’ve come out of a squeaky toy filled with solid grief and buried his face in his hands. He had a wallet full of snapshots that looked very much like this. Here’s the one where I got so dehydrated throwing up they put me in the infirmary and hooked me up to an IV! They had to tie my hands to the bed! Oh! Here’s the one where she coaxed me out of the broom closet before anyone else knew I was hiding in there! Ha, ha, we had a broom closet in our little kitchen, like it was a real house. Très amusant. When Auntie Enora was gone, she gave me a big hug and said it was going to be okay! Boy, it sure wasn’t, though!
And here’s the one where I’m under the worktable in a stranger’s basement and I want to die, but Alba’s dead because I didn’t help her so now the person putting me back together is her son! I have no right to be taking up space in this world, you all know that, don’t you?
“This is never going to stop hurting,” he said. He began to cry very softly, because there were a million people in this basement and one of them was a god and there was no way he could get away from them.
Erik sat down next to him. Not really Erik, but Erik could probably see him like this and was in that head somewhere behind the one remaining eye and blaming himself. “You know, I’m sure I could put you right, but if Erik ever found out about it I’d never see him again,” Auntie Enora said. “And they tell him things.” Erik waved a hand at the room in general. “You jackasses had to go and make fixing people a war crime and he’s got no other context. So we’re going to do it this way, in case Cousin Violet ever gets it into her head that he needs to know about it.” Erik cupped his hand over the jelly-glass. The dark liquid inside went bright, glowing green and then faded out like a dying flashlight. “I can’t make you a better person, but I can get rid of this little mistake so it stops hurting for now.”
He was going to take it. It was just so automatic. He had his hand out to take the glass. But he threw himself backwards — like when he jumped off the roof — and hit the wall behind him instead of the street. He was shaking his head. It felt like he was shaking his head a long time before he could speak. “Uh-uh. No. You’re not going to make me forget. I can’t forget this. If I don’t remember it happened I won’t remember never to do it again!”
Ann made a soft exclamation and covered her mouth again.
What?
No, Milo, it’s not… I’m not sure how I feel about it.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it because Auntie Enora had done that to Milo, but the whole point of the exercise was that Milo didn’t and couldn’t know about that. Auntie Enora had made a mess — Milo didn’t ask to remember the workhouse in excruciating detail and couldn’t stop her from doing it to him — and that was the way she cleaned it up.
On the other hand, Milo also didn’t ask for her to clean it up and he’d been very upset when he found out Ann got together with Mordecai and tried to make him forget when Calliope hurt him, so…
But if he caught her thinking about this he was going to make her explain it and then she wouldn’t get to decide whether or not he needed to know about it, he just would.
She was also trying to decide whether or not it was okay to do that to Seth. He didn’t have someone inside who could remember these things for him and keep him safe. If Auntie Enora took this away from him, it would be gone, like what happened was gone from Milo, and even if somebody told him about it, it wouldn’t be the same as having the memory of it. It wouldn’t hurt him anymore, but he wouldn’t know what to do to keep it from happening again.
No, but, seriously, when is he going to get another chance to control a monster highchair and get tangled up with Erik right after somebody tries to hurt both of them and everyone else in the house? We are never going to wire Erik into another highchair ever again, let alone the rest of it. Does he really need this information?
Milo broke into her thoughts and made her jump: I think he gets to pick. I know he doesn’t really, because she can make anyone do anything she wants. But the least wrong thing is he decides whether or not to stay hurt, and if he’s too hurt to decide right away you wait. I know she doesn’t have to and Erik can’t stop her and it’s not his fault, but she shouldn’t take it away without asking.
But what if she does, Milo? She wasn’t just asking for Seth. It was the best way she could figure out what Milo wanted for himself.
…Then we can’t fix it. I guess we leave it like she left it because we can’t put it back. And we’ll have to be the ones who know about it and try to keep him safe. Man, this is exhausting. I didn’t ask to be in charge of people.
She looked around the room, glancing at each face as if taking instant photos to remind him, It’s not just you and me. And now we’ll have to tell them about Erik not wanting to be a murderer, but that means they’ll help us keep him safe from that too.
She paused at Hyacinth and Milo reminded her, Yeah, but make really sure she knows we don’t talk about this stuff, because she is always telling people the truth for no damn reason.
What about Tommy and Penny and Calliope and Cerise?
I dunno. They seem more normal…
Auntie Enora hefted an irritated sigh and planted Erik’s hands on his hips. The blanket slid down and she pulled it up again, and picked up the glass. “Mister Seth, I don’t like to remind you people of your own culture, but magic storms don’t count and there’s a reason all of you decided that all over the world. We didn’t put it there. You all are damn contrary and you don’t listen to us anyway. That memory you have of your Aunt Diane with a bloody nose has kept you from cracking the lid on your abilities all this time and I have to imagine it’ll hold up in the future unless there is specifically a child in danger and that’s the only way you know how to help, and there is no way in hell this level of craziness is ever going to happen again. Now are you going to be reasonable? I don’t like to upset Erik, but this is ridiculous.”
Seth was sheltering against the wall and had both hands over his face. It was like a filter, even though he knew she could force him to drop everything and do whatever she wanted any time she wanted. “I think of all the times we’ve done this and I’m scared of all the things you could’ve taken away from me and I don’t want to lose any more. This is me. This is something I did and knowing it is a piece of me. My memory is me.”
“Mister Seth, your memory is warped and full of holes and that’s not on my account. You do it to yourselves… You all do it. It’s like a cylinder that gets more and more fuzzy the more you play it, and a lot of what you have you didn’t record right in the first place. The instant you saw your poor auntie with blood on her face you wrote over the part where she flat out told you she might get hurt before it even happened and you told yourself a story about how you’re a big clumsy idiot who’ll hurt everyone you love if you don’t watch yourself — and you’re still doing it! If I let you keep this in your head, Erik is going to find it out again the very next storm no matter what I do to him, and you being hurt like this is going to be part of a story he tells himself. Will you at least let me add on this part where he did something to fix it?”
“No! I don’t want him to think he has to fix…”
“Would you rather he think he hurts people and there’s nothing he can do about it? How is that working out for you, Mister Seth?”
Ann trailed down the stairs and crouched near the worktable. She didn’t like to, that was supposed to be a safe place and there were too many people in it, but there was no other way to get through. “Seth? Listen to me. We’re going to keep this for you, and for Erik. All of us here who know about it. I know you want to keep it for yourself, but that’s just going to hurt both of you. This isn’t good, but it’s the least wrong thing. Will you let us do that for you?”
“Ann, you don’t know…” Seth said. He dropped his head and shook it. “And I can’t tell you how it was. Not really. I’m not strong enough.”
Ann sat with a thump and drew her legs against her. She winced. She had multiple bruises and she was just starting to feel how tired and stiff she was. “This is what I know, because what happened to you happened to Milo. Neither of us understands it, but I saw it and I felt it and I can talk about it. You just nod your head at the end.”
Seth shook his head.
Ann put up her hand and overrode him, “No, not yet. Let me say it.” She turned towards Auntie Enora and her expression softened, but she did not smile. “Erik, sweetheart, I know you didn’t want anyone to know, but Milo and I never promised we wouldn’t tell if you needed the help. We’re sorry. We’ll be quick.”
“Never,” Cerise said, though she tried to stifle it with a hand. She and Hyacinth shared a glance. They didn’t smile, but it was possible they were both trying not to.
Ann shut her eyes and began again, “Milo and Erik were having a talk in the basement… Which was sort of a silly thing to do because they both have trouble speaking, but when they try very hard sometimes they can understand each other. So they were both trying very, very hard and something happened. They got mixed up. For a moment it was like they were one person, then Erik pulled back but Milo wouldn’t let him go. He saw… He felt how Erik was hurt and he wanted to take that away from him or share it with him or do something to make it less, but it didn’t work that way. He just made a mess.
“Then something broke them up. We don’t know what it was, but it was bigger than both of them and it wasn’t human. Maybe there was some god walking past and it decided to help. Seth, I’m guessing that’s what happened to you, but nobody was here to help you. Were you trying to protect him? To stop him from being hurt?”
Seth was staring at the wall. He nodded without turning.
“Did… Did the one person jump off the roof with the machine or was it just you?” Somehow she was certain Erik wouldn’t have done that all by himself.
“My fault,” Seth said softly. He hid his eyes in his hand. “Me. All me.”
“That was very brave of you,” she said. “If you didn’t take that thing away from him he really would’ve hurt himself with it. That’s what he and Milo were talking about. Erik almost hurt those men who broke his uncle’s arm. There was a god pressuring him to do it, but he decided it was the right thing to do, and he thought that made him a bad person. Just deciding it. If you’d really let him do it…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what that would’ve done to him.”
“He wouldn’t have wanted to without me!” Seth said.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” Ann said. “But I don’t think it matters. There was a terrible accident and that doesn’t have to be anybody’s fault. Now you need to let us clean it up and trust us to keep it from happening again.”
“Seth, I appreciate that you’re a human being with a will of your own and this is several flavors of screwed up,” Hyacinth broke in. “I don’t like that there’s a roomful of people badgering you to scramble your own brain. But the bottom line is Erik made a deal, and Auntie Enora is going to stay here running him ragged until she does what he asked. This isn’t worth it and you’re not going to win. Please. Look, if you want us to, we’ll tell you what happened right after…”
“Hyacinth!” Ann said. “Milo and I really wish you would put it together that honesty isn’t humanity’s default setting!”
Hyacinth scowled at her. “Humanity’s default settings are shit.”
“No,” Seth said quietly. “I can’t go back to feeling like this. I can’t… I can’t remember that dying makes it stop hurting and ever be safe.” He took the glass. “Just, please, please, be responsible for us when it storms and don’t let this happen again.”
Ann put her hand on his shoulder. “We promise.”
“I think I’m gonna invite Chris over to watch Lu and just hang out down here every time,” Calliope said.
“Oh, gods, please, no,” Hyacinth said. “One mad artist is enough!”
“I’m just a little annoyed at Min-Min,” Calliope muttered.
“I’ll help watch her,” Penny said. She turned her head shyly aside. “If you guys don’t mind me here. I don’t like to leave Tommy all by himself anyway.”
“Aw,” Tommy said with a snicker.
While Calliope and Hyacinth started an auxiliary conversation about relative sanity and vandalizing an ant versus gluing things to the ceiling verses threatening fire-bombers with a frying pan, Seth drank down the glass. “I don’t hate it,” he opined of the pumpkin-pie-flavored coffee. And a moment later, “I need to sleep.”
He was tired, only tired. It had the weight of warm sand; he could move through it, but only just, and he didn’t want to. It was familiar somehow, but it wasn’t worth thinking about. It wasn’t worth thinking at all. He was only tired.
“Oh, not under the table,” Ann said. She helped Erik and Auntie Enora drag him out of there and walk him to one of the cots. He was just a bit too tall for it and his ankles hung over the edge. They tucked a blanket around him. His eyes were already closed. “Quiet down, the rest of you. We can sort out the next storm when we’re done with this one.”
“I’ll just see to Erik,” Auntie Enora said. She investigated the remaining coffee, sniffing each one. “Is any of this normal…?”
“Are you going to take it away from him too?” Hyacinth said. Without waiting for a reply she went on, “Is that the deal you made?”
“I asked him to let me help him and that’s what this is,” Auntie Enora said dryly. “As you say, I’m not leaving until I’ve fulfilled my obligations and you’re not going to win.”
Hyacinth put a hand on Erik’s shoulder and talked past the god in residence, “I’m really sorry, kid. For right now, if you’re in there yelling and screaming about this. I’m really sorry.”
Auntie Enora made medicine for Erik and made him drink it, then she sat him in the other cot. “As far as these two are concerned that damn machine never made it out of the yard,” she informed the room. “That’s what would’ve happened anyhow, if Mister Milo wasn’t just the right combination of brilliant and stupid, so that’s how you’ll tell them it was. Now this whole business has been exhausting and you don’t have to worry about them anymore, so let them sleep!” She closed Erik’s eye for him, laid him down and covered him with the blanket. After that, he didn’t stir.
Ann frowned thunderously, “Hyacinth, I want to make it very clear right now that none of us are going to tell either…”
Mordecai appeared at the top of the stairs, breathless. “Is Erik all… What are you all doing down here?”
“…or him,” Ann said.
“He’s fine, we just got him to sleep, don’t wake him up,” Hyacinth muttered. She brushed past him and re-entered the front room.
She staggered and dropped her hands to her sides. “What the hell have you people done to my house?”
“Cleaned it?” Kitty offered her. She dumped the last of the debris from the ceiling into Miss Otis’s suitcase and closed it.
“Don’t look a gift Magical Lesbian Hornless Safety Unicorn in the mouth, Alice,” Barnaby said.
“The walls,” Hyacinth said. “What have you done to the walls? What’s wrong with the walls?”
“Maria took the stains out, but we didn’t have any more paper to patch the holes so I did it,” Chris said. He lifted the sleeping infant in his arms. “I taught Lu how to clone a pattern! She can learn trompe l’oeil when she’s older.” He caught himself and staggered as if he’d almost actually fallen. “Was that not okay…? Babies can’t clone a pattern…” Now, faster and with growing horror, “Babies don’t do magic! I have no idea what I’m doing! Where’s Calliope? Mars!” Lucy woke up and began to cry, then Chris just screamed.
Maria took the baby from him and said something mildly scolding. Chris ran from her and hid in the kitchen pantry.
Ted peeked out of Room 102. Maria shook her head at him and said, “Es ese tonto.” He nodded to her and then turned to Hyacinth, “Hey, Bethany and Pablo just got to sleep. Is it all right if we stay awhile?”
Hyacinth put up her hands. “If you want to go home, go home. If you want to pass out, pass out. We are not an insane asylum or an artistic movement, we are trying to be a shelter. Use it how you need. But if you need someone to hike to the drugstore and call transportation for you, please give us a few hours. I don’t trust anybody in this house to walk that far without keeling over in the gutter, this is a safety issue. Fred, I know you can’t remember where you live, don’t worry about it. We will get you home eventually. The longest we’ve ever had anyone stay is eight days and that is because Angelica had an actual concussion and then we had another storm. Does anyone need anything else?”
There were scattered nos, and Elizabeth politely excused Tania and herself to the Dove Cot, which was just at the other end of the alley. Calliope poked her head out of the basement and said, “What happened to Chris?”
“He’s hiding in the kitchen!” Hyacinth said. She bowed, “That’s my set! Goodnight!” and climbed the stairs to Room 203 to the sound of only Barnaby’s applause.
“You could at least stand up, you lazy ass,” she told him, and she closed the door.
———
Cerise appeared at the top of the basement stairs a moment later, dragging Ann with her. “We’ll just… We’ll just get you out of whatever’s left of your dress, dear,” she said.
“I need painkillers,” Ann said. “Don’t undress me without massive amounts of painkillers. If I get changed, Milo won’t take any!”
“I’ll go back for the doctor bag,” Cerise said.
———
Calliope found Chris in the pantry. She looked in from the side and tried not to corner him. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Why did you leave me alone with that baby? I screwed up our baby! I wasn’t holding her head!”
She frowned at him. “I have a controlling interest in that baby — it’s my baby, you’re just a sitter. I have the most shares of that baby, I get to decide how to manage it, I approve of your work and I’m sure she’s fine.”
“I made a fool of myself in front of all your friends!”
“Nobody noticed.”
“Nobody noticed me gluing a taxidermied raccoon to the ceiling while flying?”
Calliope leaned in and kissed him on the head. “You’re really cute, babe, but you’ve got an overinflated idea of how important you are. There was other stuff going on.”
“I broke him,” Chris muttered, twining his fingers together. “He looked really cool and now he doesn’t have a head.”
“I’m sure Milo can fix him,” Calliope said. “He rewired all my ducks!”
———
Tommy held up his guitar and nodded to Maggie, who was sitting on the dining room floor with the blond kid. Maggie was in her nightdress and the blond kid was wearing a white T-shirt that was long enough to keep him decent. They were eating cereal. “I didn’t play anything or piss anyone off, ma’am,” he told her. He grinned.
She sat forward. “Is Erik okay?”
He glanced aside and rubbed the back of his head with a hand. “I think we’re not supposed to talk about it but yeah, I think so. He’s asleep now. That’s one hell of a tough kid you guys got there, you know? Are you all training up to be soldiers or what?”
Maggie blinked at him. “I am. Erik isn’t training to be anything.”
“Magnificent, that is fundamentally incorrect,” the General said. She stood and walked over. “All children are constantly training. Mordecai and Erik may not have anything in mind, but Erik is not about to stop learning merely because his teacher is incompetent. Circumstances indicate his skill-set would do quite well in the military, or perhaps politics.” She shook her head. “But from an emotional standpoint, he is loyal to people and not territory. This limits his ability to serve, and a good commanding officer would use him, but never quite trust him. He is apt to turn on his closest allies in an instant if his orders go against what he has decided is right, and then he will act as a rogue agent, making his own decisions out of anyone’s control. He may save thousands of lives or do untold damage, but the point is he would not be doing it with any input from you, so you must be careful with him.” She waved a hand. “But perhaps an infantry position, or something supervised. Espionage is right out.”
“Erik is eight,” Soup said. He felt like somebody had to.
“I am merely plotting a trajectory which I have no capacity to influence,” the General said, “seeing as the boy is terrified of me. You might nudge him a little, Magnificent,” she added. “But I don’t imagine you’ll make him a patriot. Sometimes I have my doubts about your ability to put country over the individual.”
“I kinda think our country doesn’t want either of us and it can go screw itself, sir,” Maggie said.
“Ah, yes,” said the General. “Well, I still have a little time to work on you.” She wandered away.
“How is Seth?” Soup said after a pause.
Tommy and Penny exchanged a glance. Penny leaned down with a smile, “He’s probably fine.”
“Uh, but if he doesn’t remember what happened, don’t tell him about it,” Tommy said.
“Why wouldn’t he remember?”
“Uhhh…”
———
Mordecai considered his limited options and decided to sit on the floor next to Erik’s cot. He might wake somebody trying to arrange something less flashback-inducing, and fifty-percent of the people in this basement hated him. Maybe sixty-six, if he counted himself.
And sometimes he thought Erik ought to.
He had a few loose memories rattling around like matches in a box, and an intellectual certainty that something had happened to Erik which he should’ve prevented but didn’t.
Was he scared? Somebody broke the window, was he just scared?
That was bad enough.
We’ve got to stop meeting like this, dear one, Mordecai thought. He put his hand on Erik’s head, he couldn’t help it, he needed to feel there wasn’t any fever or any injury.
Erik shifted and opened his eye.
“Oh.” Mordecai took his hand back, but it wasn’t like that helped. He set it down again and stroked Erik’s hair. “It’s all right, dear one. Everything’s all right. You’re safe. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” Erik said softly.
“Why? What for?”
“Don’t know.”
“Then that’s all right.” He kissed Erik on the top of his head. “Go back to sleep.”
Erik reached up and held his hand, then snuggled down and went back to sleep.