Chapter 11
Mimi tried to explain to Ky that he would need an ID if he wanted to travel on a plane as a man.
“What’s that?”
“It’s sort of a little card with your name and picture.”
“Picture? Show me your ID.”
Mimi got out her driver’s license and handed it to him.
“I can illusion that,” he said. “Just give me something similar to work with.”
“They really check it.” She fished around in her purse and handed him an old library card.
“Of course.”
“They run it through a machine. They look at it, they look at you,” she insisted.
“Mmm-hmmm.” He looked at the card and felt its plastic edge. “This will do fine.”
“Well, we could visit a forger. I know they have them in LA.”
“We won’t need one.”
Mimi was skeptical since they had also only bought one ticket; so, she approached check-in without him. She figured if he was arrested, he could turn himself into a bug or something and escape, but she would be stuck answering odd questions. Well, you see, officer, he started out as my dog…
Her check-in went without a hitch, and her plan was to keep walking and let him sort out his own problems, but she couldn’t resist watching him as he approached the counter. The airline official looked completely natural, as though Ky was really handing her his ID, although Mimi knew he was not. He walked up to her holding his boarding pass.
“I’ve never traveled by plane,” he said, clearly a little too excited. He looked around the airport cheerfully. “I hate to say it, but for the most part people are doing really well without us. This past century, they have come up with so many interesting things. A plane, very interesting. Even the name is interesting, because of course it planes the air, but it also transcends the normal two-dimensional plane of human existence, the ground. It just goes to show that perseverance is the key. Want to fly, try to fly, want to fly, try to fly, and then, fly!”
“Can’t you fly without a plane?”
“Of course. I have a crow, it’s one of my shapes.”
“Then why are you so impressed?”
“Because you can’t. You don’t have any other shapes.” He said it as though the reason were obvious.
“Should I remind you that we’re not having fun, we’re flying into a dangerous man’s evil plot to destroy the world?”
“Hmmm, and look at all these people just completely willing to get into a plane even though they don’t understand the mechanics of flying.”
Mimi felt it would be better not to acknowledge that she herself had flown all over the world without the least idea of how a plane flies, except that it helps if it goes really fast. She had been the face of a glorified show about traveling; well, about traveling if you’re rich, young, and flamboyant.
Mimi settled into her first-class window seat and took a moment to savor the giggling and pointing that she got as the coach passengers filed by. She loved flying, even if she didn’t know how it worked, and maybe a little she still loved being famous. If there had been a camera crew, and no non-human traveling companion, this would be the logical start for another season of “Mimi does Europe.” Except, of course, she would be all designer-ed up. And she wouldn’t have had to plan the flight for what Ky predicted to be a no-seizure seven-hour period.
“Okay, you caught me,” she said as she buckled her seat belt. “I don’t know how a plane works.”
“But Mimi, your father owns one of the most successful airline consulting businesses in the world!” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Nice; point out more ways that I’m a failure.” She grimaced at him.
“Your father never told you?”
“I wasn’t homeschooled! Okay, actually he did tell me, but it doesn’t make any sense. Plus he makes software, you know.”
“Do you want me to tell you how a plane works?” he asked as the flight attendant demonstrated the seat belt and the oxygen masks that Mimi was always fairly certain were not in the ceiling.
“Maybe; can you do it in ten words or less?” she said idly, turning her attention out the window.
He thought for a moment. “Faster air is thinner than slower air.”
She sighed.
“Hmm, no. How about—air over a round surface is thinner than air under a flat surface.”
“My father tried to explain it to me once, and I ended up with this visual of air molecules sucking on the top of the wing through tiny drinking straws.”
“Add momentum to that and it’s not entirely wrong…. Okay, maybe it is.”
“Since you can actually fly, you don’t even get to talk. You can be a crow. If I could fly, I’d probably know how it works.”
“Crows don’t fly the way airplanes do, Mimi. Notice how we’re not flapping?” He gestured out the window. “And crows aren’t actually great flyers. I cultivated that shape because they’re interesting thinkers.”
“You think in the shape you’re in?”
“Partly. Crows think effortlessly in three dimensions; it makes it easier to plan an escape. They’re also problem solvers. They are patient. They have some precognition.”
“Precognition? Like they can predict the future?”
“Some things about the future; mostly an enemy’s next move. They’re using evidence for it. It’s not magic. There is magical precognition, too. And there’s precognition that you get from being old. Even human elders can have that. But what crows have you can think of like chess. They have built-in instincts for chess. That’s why you can shoot at crows and sure, they’re slow, they’re not good flyers, but you never hit one.”
“So when you’re a crow, you can’t get shot?”
“Well, I do things a smart crow would never do.”
“And when you’re a dog you think dog thoughts?”
“When I’m a dog I think a lot about food.”
“And when you’re a man?”
“Music, world peace.”
The plane rumbled underneath them, speeding up for takeoff.
“Pretty girls?” she couldn’t resist.
“Yes, as a man I can recognize a beautiful woman.”
“Hey! I just remembered. Was it you on the hospital window?”
“Yes.”
“You were stalking me?”
“I like to think I was assessing you.”
“For what?”
“I had a few different plans for how to enter Hal’s world. You were the best. But I had to make sure you were real. When you fell on the street, it was otherworldly. I was talking to Dennis when you came out of the club. We saw you standing there on the sidewalk. And then it was as though time stood still, the way your head turned up and you fell. It looked almost as though you were under a spell. I had a moment of doubt that you were even human.”
“You saw that?”
“We thought it was just an ordinary night. But then you surprised us both.”
“He called the ambulance.”
“Calling the ambulance and then staying with you was brave on his part. You had never had a seizure to our knowledge. We weren’t sure if Hal had done something to you, if you were a trap for us. But of course, we couldn’t leave you there. I flew over you two all the way to the hospital, just in case there was an attack.”
“But there wasn’t an attack. It was just me.”
“It was.”
They cleared the first cloud layer and made an elegant curve around LA. People and cars were already dots on the ground. “Ever been to New York?” she asked.
“Not recently, not since it’s been called New York.”
“That’s not really recent.”
“No I suppose it’s not. It feels recent, though.”
“I’m twenty-three. How old are you?” she asked him.
“Older than that.” He smiled. “But young for an Or-ta.”
“What do you look like when you are Or-ta?”
br /> “What do you mean?”
“Your shape. Can you fly in your real shape? Do you have eyes?”
“Yes and no.”
“Can you show me? Not now on the plane,” she added quickly, “later, at the hotel?”
“It wouldn’t be any fun for you. I would be invisible to you.”
“So I’ll never see the real you?”
“I don’t think about how I look as being the real me.”
“What about how you think. Is that the real you?” she asked pointedly.
Ky considered for a moment. “Well, what’s the real you?”
“You might think that’s a clever question, but I never think I’m a crow.”
“Try it sometime.” Ky laughed softly.
“I can’t try it.”
“I can’t not.”
“As a man, you can be obnoxious,” she huffed.
“That is one of the many skills that’s specific to being a person.” He smiled. “The dog is less obnoxious. I would turn into the dog for you, but the other passengers would be alarmed.”
The early autumn day was high and clear in New York when they arrived. The brightness of the day clashed with Mimi’s sense of foreboding. People in the airport seemed cheerful, energized. She had the feeling that they were blissfully unaware of the danger that she knew they were in. Once she and Ky were off the plane, Ky had forgotten his childlike enthusiasm for flying. He was back to his business face: stern brow, watchful eyes. They strode out of the airport together as disguised as they could reasonably get away with, sunglasses, caps. They couldn’t risk exposing their relationship to Henry through an inadvertent selfie or celebrity-sighting tweet. They were met by a car with a quiet driver who looked like Dennis but smaller, older, and a little grim. He got out but didn’t open the door. The three of them stood on the sidewalk.
“Sir,” the man said to Ky, “it is an honor to see you again.” Mimi detected a note of—was it sorrow?—in the man’s voice. It was an ache, just barely there.
“The honor is mine,” Ky said, and then uttered something in a language so beautiful and dramatically different from anything she had ever heard that Mimi caught her breath.
The man responded in kind, and then Ky said in English, “Time?”
“Yes,” said the man, looking at Mimi. “She wanted you to know.”
“Broken time?”
“You haven’t experienced it?”
“I may have. I didn’t recognize it for what it was. Your people are more sensitive than I.”
“I hadn’t noticed it either.”
“Let’s hope it has nothing to do with Hal. We didn’t plan for that kind of surprise.” Ky looked at the strange man. “You’re injured.”
“It was a narrow escape. One of them had some skill.”
“But you were successful.”
“I was.” The man’s tone was without drama or humility.
“Mimi, this is Oskar,” Ky said. The man nodded politely.
“That language?” she said as they got in the back seat.
“It’s Or-Ta.”
“Oskar is another Or-ta, like you?” They pulled away from the airport.
“No, he maintains the old ways, he’s like Dennis. But his people are more formal, more traditional than Dennis. He’ll take you to the hotel. You’ll have time to check in before your seizure. Your seizure will be at 3:17, and it won’t be a long one. Oskar will get you everything you need. I’ll meet you at the grand opening.” They crossed the Triborough Bridge, the choppy water of the East River cheerfully reflecting the bright autumn sky.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Hal.”
“Because of my seizures, I miss all the fun.” Mimi pouted.
“I would hardly consider this fun, but if you remember, you were supposed to miss all the fun at the last party. And that did not work out.”
“That’s a good point!” She brightened up.
“And since you have the most important job tonight-”
“Can you make it so that I’m drinking something besides water this time?”
“Special requests?”
“Strawberry daiquiri?” she said, then in response to Ky’s stern look, “Virgin.”
“As you wish,” he said. “You remember what you need to do.”
“I’ve been going over it and over it in my head.”
“Good,” he said.
“I wish you would tell me the whole plan.”
Oskar pulled over. “Here, Ky Or-Ta,” he said.
“Thank you, Oskar. Mimi, knowing the whole plan would not be helpful to you or me if you get caught.”
“I just wish I knew, if Henry is so powerful now, how do we expect to beat him?”
“Hal made his own trap.” Ky opened the car door and hopped out on the street, pulling his cap low. “Setting it will be the problem.”
Mimi felt a slight sense of panic as she watched him walk away. Oskar seemed calm, if still slightly sad. They pulled back out into New York traffic.
They had looked at maps before the trip since Ky hadn’t been to New York for more than three hundred years. Mimi had been there recently, but had not been thinking about tactical plans and exit strategies. Henry’s boutique liquor store was on Madison Avenue uptown. The hotel was further downtown, an older hotel but a favorite of Mimi’s. She liked the old lobbies with the big tiles and gilt doors. Ky liked them because the windows opened, just in case. She checked into their two-room suite. Oskar followed her upstairs, tipped the bellman, and then sat down with the newspaper.
“Do you need anything, Mimi?” he asked.
He was so much like Dennis, Mimi almost felt she was looking at the same person. Almost. But there was something about Oskar; he was quieter, if that was even possible. The corners of Oskar’s eyes were weighted with equal parts sadness and kindness. Compared to Oskar, Dennis’ reserved manner seemed cheerful.
“Thank you. I think I have everything I need,” she said.
Oskar nodded, opened the newspaper, and began to read. Bright autumn sun still poured in the big windows. She closed the door to the bedroom, got out her bite stick, and lay down on the bed.
Mimi was still woozy when she got up from her seizure. Sometimes they left her with a right-side limp, a side effect that made her doctors frown, but not explain. She pounded on her right thigh. “C’mon buddy,” she said to her tingly leg. “I need you, game face.” She hobbled around the hotel room getting dressed. Her life used to be a lot more glamorous, she thought, but perhaps less interesting. The dress she had chosen for the event was bright red, flamboyant, too much. It was a dress for the old Mimi, which was who she needed to be right now. She thought she could use some of the old Mimi’s plucky spirit. This new Mimi—the one who had seizures and was practical and hadn’t bothered to shop for matching underwear—this Mimi had some shortcomings.
Oskar was still in the central room of their suite with the newspaper when she appeared, ready for the evening.
“You look very beautiful, Miss Parks.” He had the kindly, fatherly tone of an older gentleman.
“Thank you.”
“Are you ready?” He had a thick accent. She felt shy in front of him. Here was someone who had grown up speaking the language of magic.
“Sort of,” she said. And then, “Oskar, how do you say ‘game face’ in Or-ta?”
“I do not think it has a direct translation.” Oskar was thoughtful. “But you could say something that roughly means ‘the only way out is forward.’” He said it in Or-ta. It sounded both hearty and light, beautiful.
“That’s true.” Mimi laughed.
“For immortals we have a fatalist’s sense of time.” He smiled.
“You’re not immortal, right?”
“My people are not technically immortal. We are people. But we have the memories of our family members, our ancestors, so no and yes. We hold on to our identities through many generations. We live as though we are one with our parents and
children. That’s why the Or-ta chose us. If you’re immortal, it’s easier to work with someone who, at least in a sense, is going to be around for a long time.”
“You become your parents, like, for real?”
“Yes, and our great-great-great-grandparents as well. We learn their memories; not just what happened, but the texture of their days, their moments, how they felt, what they learned. All people do that to a certain extent. We do it exactly.”
“That must be so strange. What if you have a lot of kids? Who gets to be you?”
Oskar smiled. “We don’t have a lot of kids.”
“So then you also don’t have, like, rebellious teenagers?”
“Some of our members leave. They develop personal ambition. We try not to judge.”
“Can they come back?”
“Yes, of course. Why not? When you live for so long, you can’t hold a grudge.” His voice faltered a little at this last thought.
She pondered what he described for a moment in light of her own relationship with her father. She imagined telling him that she wanted to run SkyCut, that she wanted his memories.
“How many years of memories do you have?”
“A thousand. Before that it starts to fade.”
“It doesn’t seem possible.”
“That’s why we keep to ourselves.”
“How long have you known Ky?”
“I knew Ky when he was born.”
“No way!”
“Yes, Ky was born. He was a child, in a sense. He had to create his shapes. I watched him grow up.”
“That’s hard for me to imagine.”
“For me, it’s like yesterday. It was spring of the year 1565.”
“Wow! Oskar?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not immortal in any way. And I’m afraid of what’s going to happen today.”
He smiled. “Ky Or-ta said you were very brave.”
“I’m not.”
“But you are. Admitting you are afraid, that is brave.”
“I wish I could know that our plan would work.”
“I am sympathetic, Miss Parks.” Oskar opened the hotel room door for her. “But after a thousand years, I can assure you, the only way out is forward.” He said it again, in Or-ta, and the sound of the words gave her courage.