“Not yet,” Calliel tells my aunt as he watches me. “But he will.”
“He’ll be difficult,” she warns him gently. “He won’t know what to do. You know this, yes?”
“I know,” he says, looking back down at her, the blues beginning to fade. “I’ve watched for a very long time. I can see the patterns. The shapes. The design that connects you all.”
She chuckles. “And are you in the design? Can you see yourself there?”
He shakes his head. “It’s hidden from me. I don’t remember much from up there. I remember knowing the call was coming, knowing it would be soon. I just don’t….” He squints his eyes shut. “There is much I don’t remember. Pieces. Large pieces disconnected because parts are missing. I think I knew this would happen. I think I didn’t care. I’ve been trying to put the pieces back together so the shapes make sense, but it’s still too soon. Little one, what if I don’t belong here?”
“Then we’ll deal with it as it comes,” she says, patting his face gently. “But you’ll never know unless you try. Your blue is so lovely. So warm and so beautiful. Lonely, but beautiful.”
He grins and preens under her hands.
The night is slowly returning, darkness filtering back in. Crickets are chirping. Wind is blowing through the trees. Off in the distance is the high-pitched yip of a coyote. My heartbeat slows. My breath evens out.
When the final blue fades into the night, Nina drops her hands and take
s a step back from him. “There is much you can teach each other,” she tells him quietly. “But he is trapped too.”
He nods. “I know.”
“I think I shall call you Blue,” she announces, clapping her hands together. “But I still want to know your real name.”
“Calliel.”
“Calliel,” she repeats, tasting the word on her tongue. “Very pretty. And strong. It suits you. Can I still call you Blue?” She sounds like a little girl, shyly asking for what she thinks she’ll never get.
He smiles. “You can call me what you like, little one.”
She giggles and holds her arms out, spinning in circles, her laughter spilling out in all directions. When she stops, she’s facing me. “Hello, Benji,” she says. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“I don’t know,” I say hoarsely. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Soon,” Nina says. “I told you soon you will see. And you will. Soon, we all will.” She turns again and stands on her tiptoes, then reaches up and plants a kiss to Calliel’s red beard. She spins back around, a gentle blush rising on her cheeks, evident even in the dark. She rushes toward me, a determined look on her face. I open my arms and she collides with me, breathing heavily against my neck. “There is a point to grief,” she whispers fiercely. “But there is also a point to opening your eyes and living.”
I nod, not knowing what else to say. Disbelief washes over me again.
She lets me go and pushes past me. “Nina, wait. You can’t….” I stop.
She looks at me over her shoulder expectantly.
What do I tell her? That everything we’ve both just seen is a figment of our imaginations? That this man (Blue, I think; Calliel) isn’t what she thinks he is, whatever it is she’s thinking? I can’t say those words—they would sound false to the both of us. I don’t know what I’m thinking. I don’t know what he is.
“Just… don’t tell Mom, okay?” I say finally. “Or the rest of the Trio. Not until—”
“Nina? Benji? What’s going on out here?”
Oh fuck.
Without thinking, I turn and toss the coat at Cal. He stares at it for a second until I hiss at him to put it on so he doesn’t look like he’s ready to do battle in a gladiator coliseum. He does, smiling quietly to himself.
My mother opens the screen door to Big House and Mary and Christie pile out behind her. They’re looking at us curiously until one by one they see the gigantic man still standing next to the Ford. “Hello,” my mother says uncertainly.
Calliel takes a step and starts to smile, and we’re only seconds away from, “Greetings, Lola Green, born December 15, 1962 under a corporeal moon and take me to your leader” or some other fucking crazy bullshit.
“Uh,” I override him loudly. “This is just… a friend of mine. You know. Just… hanging out. And stuff.” He looks at me curiously, and I try to put as much murder in my gaze as I possibly can, but he seems amused, nothing more.
“A friend?” Mary says, starting to grin. “Well, he’s certainly quite the specimen for a friend.”