The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

“Okay. Same if you have any trouble passing urine. Your kidneys took a beating.”

“I noticed.”

The nurse winced. Then, mouth set in a grim line, he said, “This is not us. This is not Iowa. I want you to know that we all want the s.o.b. who did this caught and thrown into jail.”

Sohal sighed. “It was a child. Maybe fifteen or sixteen. The age of my own son.”

“Your son? Is he on the visitors’ list?”

“No, sadly. He is still in Afghanistan, with his mother. My brother looks after them.”

“Ah.”

And that’s when Sohal asked the nurse to fetch his wallet. From his wallet he took a photograph.

Of course I knew before I saw. I knew the connection that I would see revealed.

The picture was of the woman who had wept and cried out at the funeral of the boy in the picture. The boy who had died standing up to killers.

“Oh, so that’s what this is about,” Oriax said, appearing behind me and looking over my shoulder. “Now, I see. But come on, Messenger, you can’t really blame young Trent for what happened thousands of miles away.”

“I blame him. He is responsible for what will happen,” Messenger said. “What is about to happen in this time line. Abdullah was about to bring his wife and son over to America. He knows his son. He knows his son is outspoken and brave and he fears what may happen to him.”

Now we watched as Sohal composed an email to his wife and son. It was written in a text I could not begin to decipher, but because of those gifts that come with being made an apprentice to the Messenger of Fear, I could understand it.

“He’s not telling them he was beaten up. Just about the vandalism and grave desecration,” I said. “He’s saying they’ll have to delay plans to come to America. Plans that were to take effect in two weeks.”

“See, he’s already over the little tussle he had with Trent,” Oriax said.

I had seen Oriax in action, but had never seen her attempt to halt a reckoning. The last time around she had intervened to help doom the evildoer. She had wanted him to be punished. She had enjoyed watching a boy burn.

This was different. She was trying to save Trent. She seemed indifferent to Pete, but she badly wanted to save Trent.

“It is not for this crime, but for some use I cannot see,” Messenger mused aloud.

Oriax knew there was no point in denying it. “You do not have the right to punish some future misdeed, Messenger,” she warned.

“True, Oriax. And neither your future-sight nor your wishes will play a part in how I perform my duty.”

“No, of course not,” Oriax sneered. “The ever-so-pure Messenger, idiot tool of a forgotten goddess, dupe of an absurd ancient faith.” Then she turned to me. Some of her overpowering physical magnetism lessened a bit when she was angry. “Perhaps when it’s your turn, mini-Messenger, you won’t be quite the fool this one is.”

She was gone then. I wondered where she went when she left us. Did she pass the time in some sort of hell? Was it anything like the hell conjured up by some religions? Did she spend her days cavorting with demons and torturing the damned?

Or at the end of her appearances did she retire to some impossible-to-imagine n-dimensional backstage dressing room to await her next curtain call?

But Oriax had left behind a lingering doubt in my mind. “Is it fair and just to take Trent and Pete to task for what happens thousands of miles away?”

I was relieved that Messenger did not accuse me of being swayed by Oriax. Instead, as he sometimes did when my question was directly related to my training, he chose to explain. “Two men decide to steal money from a store. Both vow there will be no violence. But the storekeeper resists and one of them pulls a gun and kills the storekeeper. Under the law of most nations both men are equally guilty of murder.”

“Yes, but—”

“Why are they both guilty if neither intended to kill the storekeeper and only one man fired the gun?”

“Because . . . because . . . well,” I admitted, “when I started this sentence I thought I knew the answer. But I obviously don’t.”

“Admitting ignorance is a good thing,” Messenger said, sounding disconcertingly like an algebra teacher I used to have. “The intention was not to kill, but it was to break the law, to do a wicked thing. When you choose to do evil you break faith with gods and men. You declare yourself an enemy to law and morality. You choose to serve the purposes of foul creatures and forces. Trent and Pete assaulted the girl. Their school evicted them. They made matters infinitely worse, then, with violent attacks. Did they anticipate that they were setting off a chain of events that would result in Aimal’s death? No. No more than the man who drives a car while drunk intends to kill a pedestrian. And yet he is held responsible.”

“Do not plant a weed and pretend surprise when it grows to strangle your garden,” I said, quoting from memory. “For, I tell you that to hate is to kill, for from hatred grows death as surely as life grows from love.”