From the Dust Returned

So all stood aside as the flood of shadow and cloud and rain that talked in voices filled the cellar, stashed itself in bins marked with the years they had died but to rise again, and the parlor chairs were seated with aunts and uncles with odd genetics and the kitchen crone had helpers who walked more strangely than she, as more aberrant cousins and long-lost nephews and peculiar nieces shambled or stalked or flew into pavanes about the ceiling chandeliers and feeling the rooms fill below and the grand concourse of unnatural survivals of the unfit, as it was later put, made the pictures tilt on the walls, the mouse run wild in the flues as Egyptian smokes sank, and the spider on Timothy’s neck take refuge in his ear, crying an unheard “sanctuary” as Timothy ducked in and stood admiring Cecy, this slumberous marshal of the tumult, and then leaped to see Great Grandmère, linens bursting with pride, her lapis lazuli eyes all enflamed, and then falling downstairs amidst heartbeats and bombardments of sounds as if he fell through an immense birdcage where were locked an aviary of midnight creatures all wing hastening to arrive but ready to leave until at last with a great roar and a concussion of thunder where there had been no lightning the last storm cloud shut like a lid upon the moonlit roof, the windows, one by one, crashed shut, the doors slammed, the sky was cleared, the roads empty.

And Timothy amidst it all, stunned, gave a great shout of delight.

At which a thousand shadows turned. Two thousand Beast eyes burned yellow, green, and sulfurous gold.

And in the roundabout centrifuge, Timothy with mindless joy was hurled by the whirl and spin to be flung against a wall and held fast by the concussion, where, motionless, forlorn, he could only watch the carousel of shapes and sizes of mist and fog and smoke faces and legs with hooves that, jounced, struck sparks as someone peeled him off the wall in jolts! “Well, you must be Timothy! Yes, yes! Hands too warm. Face and cheeks too hot. Brow perspiring. Haven’t perspired in years. What’s this?” A snarled and hairy fist pummeled Timothy’s chest. “Is that a small heart? Hammering like an anvil? Yes?”

A bear

ded face scowled down at him.

“Yes,” said Timothy.

“Poor lad, none of that now, we’ll soon stop it!”

And to roars of laughter the chilly hand and the cold moon face lurched away in the roundabout dance.

“That,” said Mother, suddenly near, “was your Uncle Jason.”

“I don’t like him,” whispered Timothy.

“You’re not supposed to like, son, not supposed to like anyone. It’s not in the cards, as they say. He directs funerals.”

“Why,” said Timothy, “does he have to direct them when there’s only one place to go?”

“Well said! He needs an apprentice!”

“Not me,” said Timothy.

“Not you,” said Mother instantly. “Now light more candles. Pass the wine.” She handed him a salver on which stood six goblets, brimmed.

“It’s not wine, Mother.”

“Better than wine. Do you or do you not want to be like us, Timothy?”

“Yes. No. Yes. No.”

Crying out, he let the stuff fall to the floor and fled to the front door to fall out in the night.

Where a thunderous avalanche of wings fell down to clout his face, his arms, his hands. A vast confusion brushed his ears, banged his eyes, chopped his upraised fists as, in the terrible roar of this downfell burial he saw a dreadfully smiling face and cried, “Einar! Uncle!”

“Or even Uncle Einar!” shouted the face, and seizing him, threw him high in the night air where, suspended and shrieking, he was caught again as the man with wings leaped up to catch and whirl him, laughing.

“How did you know who I was?” cried the man.

“There’s only one uncle with wings,” Timothy gasped as they shot above the rooftops, rushed the iron gargoyles, skimmed the shingles and veered up for views of farmlands east and west, north and south.

“Fly, Timothy, fly!” shouted the great bat-winged uncle.

“I am, I am!” gasped Timothy.

“No, really fly!”

And laughing, the good uncle tossed and Timothy fell, flapping his arms, and still fell, shrieking, to be caught again.

“Well, well, in time!” said Uncle Einar. “Think. Wish. And with the wishing: make!”

Timothy shut his eyes, floating amidst the great flutter of pinions that filled the sky and blinded the stars. He felt small buds of fire in his shoulder blades and wished more and felt bumps grow and push to burst! Hell and damn. Damn and hell!