He cradles the book and sets it on the table, now pulling a dictionary of Old Russian from a more ordinary shelf behind him, fetching a spiral notebook and pencils, and sitting down to read. Of the four books he brought home from forests near the Volga (each with its own shelf and booby traps), this is one of the two he understands least.
After The Book of Sorrows, that is.
But this one.
He knows, as well, that it is the most precious book he owns, and that any magus who becomes aware of its existence will stop at nothing to get it. It is said that Rasputin was protected by some of the lesser spells held within, and that Koschey the Deathless mastered the whole thing before the crone extorted it from him in the time of the Tsar Alexander II.
So far, Andrew has come to understand parts of it but is afraid to try anything beyond a sort of dream-walking wherein he sends his consciousness, still well tethered to his sleeping body, to roam the beaches of the lake or through walls into the homes of his neighbors.
He gave this last bit up after observing his misanthropic survivalist neighbor John Dawes (across Willow Fork Road, binocular distance) drunkenly shaving his scrotum with a straight razor while watching a Gilligan’s Island rerun. The sight had so startled Andrew that he experienced a sort of spasm and suspects he nearly snapped his tether. He has seen nothing yet to convince him that an actual hell exists (or that it does not), but leaving his body comatose while his soul haunts the house of a lonely, gun-happy ball-shaver sounds close enough. Now he confines his experiments to beachcombing and low-altitude flight, never straying more than a mile or two away from himself; he intends to push himself further if he can understand how to get back into himself without the comforting astral umbilicus that anchors him. Getting back into your own body without it is the first step. Next and harder will be taking over another body, which is a fearful business that smacks of actual evil. Temporary possession is possible, but the language in Of the Soul warns that stuffing two souls in one body is draining to both: The original host might succeed in pushing you out and into death’s embrace; if not, the presence of multiple souls in one body attracts “other beings,”
Sign off, Ichthus70
whose company might be undesirable. Permanent occupation is, of course, murder.
And yet, one might use this to live indefinitely, practicing a sort of biological alchemy, transmuting the lead of aging and sick bodies into the gold of healthy, young ones. One might live on in beauty and strength for centuries.
Andrew strongly suspects some are doing this now.
He often muses that if he were to walk into a room full of those who actually run the world, the invisibles that heads of state and oil barons take their marching orders from, it would look like the audition room for a TV soap opera: They would all be lovely; they would all look twenty-five to forty, and whether this was accomplished by the witchcraft of science or the science of witchcraft would be even money. Those who trade in magic value money less than others, true, because they can always manufacture, steal, win, or conjure it as needed; most really powerful conjurers regard those who hoard money as nothing but glorified squirrels saving for a winter they will never live to see. But when you stack enough zeroes behind an integer, enough, say, to bribe a prime minister or buy a vast old-growth forest, even a sorcerer won’t ignore it; a handful of people may well be buying their way into extended youth.
“But not eternal youth,” Andrew says at half voice.
Nothing is forever.
A memory makes him almost smile, and he shakes it off, turning his mind to the problem of the tether.
Now Salvador walks into the room and pours Gerolsteiner water from a clay pitcher (one of Anneke’s) into Andrew’s glass, hoping to receive another command, but resigning himself to being ignored—his master has inclined his head to study, and, although the days are past when the dry man with the dog’s heart has to clear two empty wine bottles from the table and cork a third before pulling his sodden master to bed by the heels, it will be nearly dawn before the magus shuts his book.
15
“Get that pinché thing away from me,” Chancho says.
Ten A.M., time for training.
Chancho has taken the morning off from the North Star Garage, which is his prerogative since he owns it. Todd, Rick, and Gonzo, his three employees who vary so much in height they could be a totem pole, will handle things at a slower pace in his absence, but they will still get the work done well, and God help them if they fart around and charge for the farting-around time. Chancho wants his customers to tell all their friends how cheap repairs are at North Star, how fast the work gets done, how polite the mechanics are. Gonzo, six and a half feet tall but so thin he looks like he stepped out of an El Greco, handles the counter and the phone—he wears his hair long and has a shitty goatee he used to wear a rubber band around
Why the f do you wear that thing in your beard?
You can say fuck to me, I won’t be offended.
I don’t say fuck no more.
You just did.
Why do you wear it?
I dunno.
Then stop. I won’t make you cut the beard, even though it makes you look like a pimp, but that rubber band got to go. Put it around some money.
I don’t have any.
That’s because you put it in the pinché bank. Banks are full of robbers. Put rubber bands around that shit and bury it.
Why is it okay to say shit but not fuck?
…
I need to think about this.
but Gonzo has a voice like wildflower honey pouring winter-slow from a jar, and eyes like Paul Newman.
Everybody likes Gonzo.
The people of Cayuga County are still a little on the xenophobic side, and the Mexican invasion is only just beginning to lap at the ankles of upstate New York, so bearish, tattooed Chancho doesn’t want his brown face to be the first one they see at North Star.
He doesn’t need their love.
Just their business.
When it comes to love, he gets all he needs from his wife and Jésus Christ. Consuela got fat, but Jésus stayed skinny; he would have preferred the reverse, since he only has to chingar Consuela, but her face is still pretty and he remembers how her body was in Mexico and Texas. Maybe she does the same for him—he’s got a bigger belly now, too, and fair is fair.
“No, seriously, brujo, get this cabrón away from me. He gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Salvador stands with two bottles of mineral water balanced on a tray, his hips barely moving in the echo of a wagging tail. Salvador remembers the big man with his smell of motor oil and cumin from his four-legged days. Chancho used to throw the Frisbee for him, and praise him for how high he jumped, and scratch his ears. His master explained to him that Chancho is afraid of him now, but that he shouldn’t take that personally.