The Shotgun Arcana Read online

  “You know what you are? What I am?” Bick said.

  Emily nodded.

  “I am the daughter of an angel and a human woman. I believe the theological term is Nephilim?”

  “I was with your mother for almost a year,” Bick said. “I wanted to be with her forever. She was a brilliant artist, Emily. I met your mother when I was in a bit of a crisis about my purpose and the Almighty’s intentions with the universe, with people. I was led to ponder that perhaps God was not as benevolent as I had come to believe He was in His plans and experiments. I saw your mother’s work in a gallery in San Francisco and it was like the human soul speaking to me, reassuring me, when my God was silent and would not. I determined I had to meet the artist, to know her. My duties forced me to return to Golgotha. I sent word for her that I wanted her to join me. I received word back she had died giving birth to you.” He paused at the memory. “Years later, I told Caleb about you, when he first came to me and told me he wanted to search out all his brothers and sisters.”

  “How many of us are there?” Emily asked.

  “I couldn’t say,” Bick replied.

  “That many?” Emily said. “So I’m not the only one that you lost track of. How did Caleb come to find you?”

  “That is a very long story for another day,” Bick said. “Caleb spoke of you often and with great pride. If you had a guardian angel in your life, it was him, not me.”

  “Yes, he was,” Emily said. “He was very kind to me. I loved him very much. He took good care of me; he spoke of you often too. He tried to explain the way you were, explained that you couldn’t be different any more than the ocean could not be wet. He told me you loved him, loved me and loved all of us in your own ways, as best you could.”

  “If you had written to me earlier, I could have been prepared to meet you at the stage,” Bick said, “or arranged more civilized methods of conveyance for you to Golgotha.”

  “I liked the stage,” Emily said. “All those people jostled together, the coughing, the smells—even the stink! The stories they told, the songs. It was so … alive.”

  Bick nodded. “Yes. I feel that way whenever I visit a large city.”

  “Besides that, I wanted to surprise you,” Emily said. “I wanted to see you without preparation. I wanted to ask you why you let me spend over seventeen years in an orphanage in San Francisco.”

  Bick drained a good third of his glass in a single drink.

  “Because,” Bick said, “I am a black-hearted villain. You’ve been in town a few hours, surely you must have heard that by now?”

  “I have yet to fully experience your reputation firsthand,” Emily said. “It sounds as if I will have something to look forward to. Caleb, of course, told me about you from his experiences being with you.”

  “And what did he say?” Bick asked.

  “That you traffic in prostitutes and deal with criminals and worse,” she said.

  Bick feigned surprise and insult.

  “I am a respectable, upstanding pillar of this fine community. One of the founding fathers of Golgotha, if you will, since my family was here even before the Mormons arrived.”

  “Your family?” Emily asked.

  “I must change my identity every so many decades to avoid being discovered for my true nature. I have taken the name Bick for some time now.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Emily said.

  “I am a sober-minded sage, town elder and civic leader,” he said, raising his glass in salute.

  “Who consorts with evil men,” Emily added.

  “I do,” Bick said. “I truck with malefactors most foul, politicians even! I have for a very, very long time, my dear. It has been my sad experience that the ‘criminals and worse’ of this world are the ones who have the power and the will to get things done. I wish it were otherwise, but that whole ‘meek shall inherit the Earth’ homily isn’t very likely.”

  “How can you say things like that?” Emily said. “Given what you are, where you come from? You know better, don’t you?”

  Bick finished his drink and walked over to the cart to make another one. “An excellent question: Who better than an angel of the Lord to know the ethical landscape of the cosmos? If only it were that easy.”

  “It … it isn’t that easy?” Emily asked. “You’re an agent of God Almighty. You were created directly by God—the one true God—to act in His name across the universe. You…” She paused and pointed to the drink in Bick’s hand as he sat back on the love seat. “Does that even affect you?”

  “It does if I allow it,” Bick said, and took another swallow from the glass. “And at the moment, I’m allowing it. So, God Almighty…”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “You … you’ve seen Heaven, lived there, right? You have seen God, spoken to Him.”

  Bick leaned closer to her, his eyes intent. “Tell me, Emily. Do you recall much about your early life when you were an infant, when you were one, two years old?”

  “No, not really,” she said.

  “It’s the same for me,” he said. “I have been here for millions of years, Emily, living in flesh more than spirit for most of that time.”

  Bick emptied the tumbler again. He looked at the empty crystal.

  “I remember … it is very cold here compared to there,” he said. “I remember that when God looked at me, when He spoke to me, it was the most contented feeling I have ever experienced, but I cannot hold His face in this piece of meat you call a brain. I can’t remember most of Heaven anymore, but yes, I know it is real.”

  “You said ‘He,’” Emily said. “God is a man? That’s what they say in church.”

  “God simply is.” Bick said. “Humanity embraced It. They gave It color and gender, shape and form. They put words in Its mouth. They always have and they still do, perhaps they always will. I experience God as a ‘He,’ but God is too vast to be held prisoner by language or biology.”

  “‘They,’” Emily said, “not ‘you.’ Humanity is ‘they’ to you and me. I’m not human, am I? I mean, I’ve known for years, but when I hear you say it, it becomes real. I’m outside the things you are talking about.”

  “No, just the opposite, you are very much a part of it,” Bick said, leaning toward her. “You are in both worlds, Emily—you, Caleb, all of those like you—you are born of flesh and the infinite … and have the best of both worlds. I’m an exile in this world. You are not. This is your home.”

  “What do you mean by the infinite? You mean other children of angels?”

  “Angels, demons, spirits,” Bick said, “and more than that. I’ll tell you a little secret, Emily. Consider it a part of your birthright. There are myriad gods, as many as the human experience could summon. I can’t see God’s face anymore, but so many humans can picture Its every detail. Your mother could, in her art. It’s one of the most remarkable things about humanity, their capacity to dream, to see without sight. You still possess that too. You truly have the best of both worlds within you.”

  “I … I don’t understand,” Emily said. “You’re saying that there is not just your God—the one true God in Heaven? That humanity dreamed your God and all these other gods and spirits and devils up? How can that be, since you and all the angels and God existed before men existed? If they are fabrications of man, then how can you have agency—how can you even exist? How can there be more than one all-powerful, all-knowing being when, by definition, two or more such beings would undermine such claims?”

  “You’re an artist, correct? Like your mother?” Bick asked. Emily nodded. Bick held up the empty glass tumbler. The light from the massive window behind his desk, which provided him with an excellent view of Golgotha’s Main Street, caught the cut glass and refracted the light.

  “As an artist, let’s say you met a man who has been blind since birth,” Bick said. “How would you describe the color blue to him?”

  “I would tell him to feel ice, to touch water, to let the wind caress him, and I would tell him that it was al
l like the color blue,” she said.

  “So you would give him associations to provide an analogy to the color,” Bick said. She nodded. “Do you think any two people would give him the same analogies?”

  “It’s doubtful that they would,” Emily said. “It’s subjective. Each person would experience blue differently.”

  “But the color blue exists separate from people, correct? It is an objective part of this reality? Yes?” He turned the glass in the light and the prism of colors shifted.

  “Well, yes, but…,” Emily said, struggling to articulate her thoughts.

  “Is there a perfect blue? An ideal blue, Emily? A ‘one true blue’?”

  “No,” she said, and smiled. “I mix the pigments up each time I paint and it’s never exactly the same.”

  “And do you think blue would exist if there was no one in the whole universe to see it, to name it, to define it as light blue or dark blue, baby or cerulean or navy or midnight? Would those colors exist as potential waiting to be defined or as reality waiting to be experienced?”

  “I think I’ll have that drink now,” she said.

  Bick smiled and nodded

  “We shall make a philosopher out of you yet,” he said.

  Bick escorted Emily to the Imperial, located off Prosperity Road, near the northern base of Argent Mountain. The land, past the western border of Johnny Town, was already beginning to fill up with new homes and businesses, all fueled by the silver boom.

  He instructed the manager of the hotel, Lionel Kinkaid, to give her the finest suite in the new hotel and a line of credit for any shops or stores in Golgotha.

  “That is very generous of you,” Emily said as she wandered the expansive suite on the top floor. It was dark outside now and Emily looked down on the town from her balcony window. “I assure you, I won’t abuse your hospitality. I came to Golgotha to find what happened to Caleb, but also I wanted to see you, see what you were like in person.”

  “I’m sorry if I disappointed you,” Bick said.

  “You didn’t,” Emily said. “Though you still haven’t fully explained why you never came for me. I do not accept that you are merely evil and capricious.”

  “There are many in this town that would debate that point with you,” Bick said. “At any rate, I am sorry for your difficult upbringing and my part in it.”

  Emily shrugged.

  “I’m not sure I believe that either,” she said.

  “I know you have just met me but you can believe that. I am sorry you had to endure that place.”

  “I wouldn’t give up my years in the orphanage, now,” Emily said. “They made me stronger, gave me eyes to see the good in even the worst pits life may drop you into. Life can be horribly painful and dreadfully unfair, but the colors and the hues, the final tapestry, it’s worth the suffering, made more beautiful by it, sometime.”

  “Human experience, human perception never ceases to amaze,” Bick said, offering his daughter her shawl. “Humans can sense so little of the universe around them and yet they use the feeble senses they have along with an indomitable spirit to find order in chaos, discover beauty in horror. Amazing. May I have the honor of taking you to supper? I’m sure you are ravenous.”

  Emily allowed him to drape the shawl over her shoulders. “Yes, very,” she said. “Thank you. ‘Ravenous.’ Do you even need to eat?”

  “No,” Bick said. “I don’t, but I enjoy it very much. Some days I even get hungry.”

  Emily shook her head. “I know I’m not, but I still feel quite human.”

  “The best of both worlds,” Bick said opening the door for his daughter. “The best.”

  The High Priestess (Reversed)

  Night fell on Golgotha. The evening was in full swing at the Dove’s Roost. The piano player, who, by whorehouse tradition, was always called the Professor, was playing an off-key rendition of Come on in Old Adam, Come in! in the main parlor. With the Scholar and the Professor in attendance at the Roost, many of the girls had come to call their home and workplace the university.

  All three downstairs parlors were crowded with clients and public girls, drinking, laughing and flirting.

  The Scholar made his rounds, ever-present cudgel in his hand as he prowled the halls of his domain, ever vigilant for trouble. He nodded to Ham as she greeted a horde of drunken miners in the foyer. She nodded back and gave him a strange smile. He frowned and then walked down the first floor hall to his office.

  He knew someone was in the office as soon as he opened the door. The lamps he had lit earlier still burned, but now several others did as well. His office was decorated, as was the rest of the Dove’s Roost, in French décor. He didn’t care for it—too effeminate for his taste. His one addition since arriving had been to add bookcases to accommodate the personal library he’d had shipped from Baltimore. He always found comfort and peace in being surrounded by walls of words.

  He choked up on the cudgel as he stepped inside, expecting a snooping employee or a thieving customer.

  The woman sitting at his desk was bewitching. The Scholar had learned long ago to not allow his reason to be swayed by a pretty face or a sharply leg, but this woman gave him pause. She was short, no more than a few inches over five feet; her hair was a mane of ebony tresses that fell down to the middle of her back and covered her breasts. Her complexion was a shade lighter than cinnamon and her eyes were hazel constellations flecked with emerald. Her body was lithe, and she appeared to be dressed in a loose black poet shirt, covered by an unbuttoned vest with a peacock pattern of black and green silk. She stood as he entered and he saw she wore blousing harem pants with a matching peacock pattern of green and black. Intricate spirals, chains and mandalas of henna decorated both her hands and forearms. She smiled and it was like thrill of first kiss. However, the Scholar noted her eyes did not smile. They were clear and even in their stare—ready. She stepped out from behind the desk and there was a faint jingle. She wore no shoes and had toe rings with tiny silver bells on them.

  “Who are you?” the Scholar asked.

  “The new owner of the Roost,” the woman said. Her voice held the accent of many places, but none he could place. “I was going over our books,” she said, nodding toward the large leather book open on his desk. “You keep good records.”

  “Thank you.” The Scholar moved closer to the woman. “But I’m afraid you will have to leave Mr. Bick’s property.”

  “Mr. Bick’s property—that’d be you, wouldn’t it?” she said.

  “I have no desire to harm someone as lovely as you,” the Scholar said calmly. “But I will if you don’t come along.”

  The woman smiled. “You are quite the flatterer,” she said. “Let’s see what you have, my stoic friend.”

  The Scholar knew what was coming a second before it happened. She used the edge of his desk to support her arms as she launched a double-legged kick at his chest. It was an impressive feat of acrobatics and of strength. He prepared to grab her legs as they approached his chest, but then she twisted and arced with her whole body into the inch or so below his knees. He realized the chest kick was a feint just as his legs gave and he crashed onto the floor. The pain was significant but he endeavored to ignore it. He swung the cudgel at her temple as she lighted on his chest. She deflected the heavy wooden club with her forearm, which gave him an opening to grab her hair and yank her hard, off him and across the room. She turned the throw into a tumble and came up crouched low to the ground and with one leg fully extended away from her body. The Scholar had seen African sailors in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor perform similar tumbles and feats of muscular liquidity while their shipmates clapped and pounded drums. He had inquired into the odd mixture of boxing, tumbling and dance.

  “You know Engolo,” he said. “Impressive.”

  “More impressive that you know what it is,” she said. “Your nickname is well suited to you, Scholar.”

  She tumbled, hands over feet, and ended up before him in a handstand of sorts; bot
h her feet snapped and caught him under the chin. She felt the crunch of his jaw. He responded almost as quickly with a hold, slipping his arm between her legs and around her waist, locking his hands, and then fell forward, smashing her under his weight and hearing the air rush from her lungs at the impact. Reeling from the other’s assault, both of them crawled to opposite corners of the office floor. A little blood pooled at the Scholar’s lips and he wiped it away on the back of his hand. The woman winced and tested one of her ribs, hissed with pain and then smiled at the Scholar.

  “You know Nuba fighting,” she said, nodding. “Very good, my friend.”

  “I dabble. We both obviously grew up in large port towns,” the Scholar said. “And spent a great deal of time at the docks. And I know the names of the people I call friend.”

  “Rowan,” she said. “Black Rowan.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” the Scholar said. “Shall … we continue? Shall … we…” He found it hard to speak. “What, what … did you … do to me?”

  “Drugged you, about an hour ago when you drank that mug of coffee in the kitchen,” Rowan said. “I’m surprised it took this long to register with you. You are a remarkable specimen.”

  “You…,” the Scholar muttered as the world blurred and slid away from his view and darkness fell. “You … are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  The Scholar tried to rise, made it most of the way and then collapsed facefirst on the floor. Rowan groaned and made her way to her feet. The door to the office opened and Ham entered, fan in hand, and closed the door behind her.

  “Is he dead?” she asked Rowan.

  “No,” Rowan said as she sat down behind the desk again with a groan. “A man that can keep books that good, and fight that well, is too much of an asset to kill. I’ll need him. When he wakes up, make him a job offer.”

  Ham nodded. “Do you want me to start bringing the girls in so you can explain how things are changing, boss?”