The child’s throat gave a plaintive squeak. “Redder’s my imaginary friend, an old imaginary friend from years ago. They’re still in there, and there’s red guts all coming out and splattered all over the cave. I wanted to miracle it better but then Redder would be all real and then the bad guy could hurt them worse.” Bridger sobbed against Saladin’s threadbare T-shirt. “That would be worse, right? Do you think it hurts worse if it happens when you’re real?”
Saladin held the child awkwardly, inept at holding without hurting. “They killed your imaginary friend?”
“I want Mycroft. I want my friends back. I want all this to go away!”
Faithful Saladin let the child slip back to the ground, but took the boy’s head between his hands, gently but firmly, as when one tests a fruit to see if it is ripe enough to pluck. “Do you want me to make it so they can’t hurt you anymore? Do you want me to make everything go away?”
Imagine now, reader, that you are Providence. You have already decided that your Intervention, this miracle with which you have trespassed upon the ordered cosmos, will not die here at Saladin’s hands, as I had asked. But how will you prevent it? How will you make my supreme predator ignore the tearful wishes of the one person in the world who matters to him? The answer depends on what kind of Providence you are. Are you the deterministic ricochet of pool balls on a table? If so, then you must already have another pool ball on its way: a bird to startle the hunter and make him let go, or a hole to trip him, dug by some rabbit now five generations dead. Perhaps you are instead a chess master, moving pieces on a board? Then you move a new piece into play; my queen threatens your king so you advance one of your own knights, Dominic perhaps, or Thisbe. Perhaps you are instead a master of puppets? The all-commanding author of the Great Scroll who has predestined every act of your creatures from infinity? If so, you can simply make Saladin choose not to kill, as you make every decision for every person, from creation to the end of days. Or are you perhaps that mildest form of Providence, a parent, who has reared your children carefully, teaching them the values you think will guide them best, different for each, in hopes you might thereafter trust them to make their own decisions as they explore your world? This last, hands-off image of Providence appeals to many, especially to those afraid to face a universe without a Father but unwilling to call themselves unfree; contemplate it longer, though, and you will find it no more liberating than the others, for such a universal Parent would make every one of us a set-set.
Providence had its king defend himself: “I wish you really were Apollo Mojave.” The child sniffled. “Apollo would be able to figure out what the bad guys want, and make me understand it, and then we could make a plan, and get Utopians to help.”
Will you believe me if I claim the predator’s breath caught? That his hands shook? Tame humans are easy enough to surprise, but for a creature always on guard, watching his back, as paranoid as nature intended beasts to be, this was the first time in Saladin’s life that he had let a person draw so close and only then sensed danger. I told you, reader, man is a beast that hunts by trust. A lion cub may lash out with claws it does not yet know it has, and so may Bridger. “That’s right,” Saladin answered. “That’s exactly what Apollo Mojave would do.”
“If I just keep running away, all that’ll do is make more places I can’t come back to. I have to make the bad guy stop, but I can’t figure out how to make them stop until I know why they’re doing it. What do they want? I don’t understand strangers enough to figure out what they want. Do you?”
“Me?” Saladin shook his head. “I don’t have much experience with other people.”
“They want me to come meet them, but I don’t want to.”
“Who? The attacker?”
“They left a note, an address. But I don’t want to go. I’m sure they’ll do something awful. I know if I go maybe they’ll tell me what they want, but there has to be another way. Some people are good at figuring out what people really want, even if they won’t say. Apollo was, that’s what Mycroft always says. That’s what I need.”
This smile Saladin should only have for me. “Sorry, I can’t turn into Apollo Mojave for you.”
“Do you want to?”
“What?”
Bridger dug his fingers into the contours of the coat. “Do you want to turn into Apollo Mojave? You’d be a lot less scary that way.”
What now, Providence? You have saved your king, how will you write yourself out of this little predicament? A stick with a rag for costume is a doll, and a human in a costume is one just as much. But if you wanted Apollo on the board you would not have let me take him in the first place.
“No, the last thing I want is for Mycroft to have to kill me, too. Come on.” Saladin took Bridger by the arm and started back toward the cave. “Show me the note, and the body. Human beings I can’t read so well, but gore, there I’m fluent.”
“No!” Bridger tugged hard. “I don’t want to go back there!”
What face would my Saladin have now? Disgust, I think, as when the golden prince Laurel Mardi passed out in his arms on the steps of our guillotine, and so napped through his final moments, learning nothing. “That’s the thing about gore, Bridger, if you don’t let yourself look at it then your imagination twists it in your mind and makes it into a kind of nightmare instead of letting you learn from it. You have to look at it, see what they did exactly, blood for blood, or you’ll never understand it.”
“No! I want to forget!” The boy tried to break free, but Saladin hoisted him, and slung him kicking over his shoulder.
“What did you feel when you saw it?” Saladin asked. “Did you want revenge?”
“No!”
“You did, didn’t you, just a little bit? You want to forget so you can pretend you’re incapable of thoughts like that. Well, all human beings are capable of thoughts like that, kid, and you can act on them too if you want. It’s up to you whether you do or not, but if you’ve had those thoughts you can’t un-think them just by running away.”
“No! I don’t want to! I don’t want someone with my powers to think like that!”
Saladin paused, sensing again the danger, as birds and hounds stiffen well before the earthquake. “What are you, kid?”
“I don’t know. Mycroft says I’m a miracle.”
Saladin set Bridger down once more, and peered into their open face. “You’re thirteen, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“How long have you known Mycroft?”
“Years and years, since I was little.”
“And Mycroft raised you to be this soft? Mycroft Canner could’ve raised you to feast on corpses if they’d wanted to.”
Bridger’s sobs made Saladin’s invisible sleeves rustle, like those almost-present tremors in the corner of the eye which make the credulous tell tales of ghosts. “Mycroft says it’s important for me to be a kid, because only a kid can grow up to be a human being. I of all people need to not be a monster.”
Of all men, reader, Mycroft Canner does not deserve to have been blessed with so wise and trusting a lover as Saladin. “All right,” he answered. “There’s a logic to that, I’ll accept it. I won’t make you look, but you have to stay close to me. If this stalker scares Mycroft, I’m not letting you out of arm’s reach for an instant: it’s not safe. I’ll carry you piggyback, and you can keep your eyes closed. Once I see what the stalker’s done, I may be able to figure out why they’re doing this, and how to end it. Sound good?”
Bridger’s nod was more than half sob. “Mm-hm.”
“Let’s see if the coat likes you.” Saladin lifted the hem and draped it over Bridger’s arm, which promptly vanished, leaving only grass. “The coat says yes.” Saladin fished inside the coat, the Griffincloth wriggling like heat distortion. “Let’s see, this thing hooks to that thing and pull this … there.” He slipped his left arm out of the coat and let it fall halfway off. “See, there are some straps there that you can sit in like a little seat, see them? You can climb on my back and sit your butt in this loop and hold on to this strap, and then I can cover you with the coat and no one can see either of us. Alley-oop!”