Chapter 13
When they landed in LA, the smog lay in thin, striated sheets. The plane brushed down through them, one after another, the bars of a prison the city had created for itself. Mimi had flown into LA hundreds of times, but she always looked out the window. Usually, when she flew, she loved the takeoff and landing. Today, though, the landing was oppressive for her. The city looked hot and lazy under all those layers of smog after the energy and excitement of New York. Dennis picked them up just outside the baggage claim. Mimi got in the car and immediately put her face against the air conditioning vent. Ky turned back into a dog in the back of the limo and lay down on the seat with his face on his paws, his gray silky brow wrinkled in thought.
As they pulled up to the Parks’s 1970s-style mansion, Mimi tried to see it from Ky’s perspective, as though she were revisiting Earth after a few hundred years. LA wasn’t even that old. It had been a forest or a swamp or something. She didn’t remember. Dennis dropped them off at the front door where broad, clean, white steps came up to the big oak paneled door with its ornate windows.
Martine was beaming at them as they came in. Mimi tried to look cheerful. She knew that Martine would be happy if she thought they had had a good time. She might have to admit to Martine that Henry had been arrested…arrested? That would be her story. But not right now.
“Did you have a good time, querida?”
“It was amazing,” said Mimi.
“You’re feeling okay?”
Mimi realized that she was limping again. “Yes, I just can’t sit comfortably, you know, on a plane like that for so long.”
“You didn’t, you didn’t have a seizure on the plane, did you? I know you were worried about that.”
“No,” Mimi said, “I didn’t.” She hadn’t been worried about it, but she realized that when Ky left, she would have to be. She would be back to a ten-minute warning if she got a new dog. The thought made her gloomy. She wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
“I’m glad, honey. Is Ky…is your dog limping too?”
Mimi and Ky looked at each other. Ky showed a bare patch of fur and a scar where he had been sliced open with Hal’s knife. Mimi hadn’t noticed it in the dark limo. They hadn’t thought about what to tell Martine. “He just, well, in New York…” Mimi started. “He was hit by a car.”
“Oh no!” Martine rushed over to Ky and grabbed his head and kissed it. He wagged his tail. “Should we take him to the vet?”
“No,” said Mimi. “Er, I mean, don’t worry, we did, in New York. He’s fine. The vet said he’s fine. He’s just sore.”
“He looks sore. Poor thing. He’s never been to the big city before.”
“Kind of.”
“I’ll get you a treat, my beautiful Ky.” Martine went into the pantry.
Ky walked over to Mimi and stood where his wagging tail could hit her repeatedly in the leg. He whispered, “I’m going to miss Martine.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to stay?” Mimi giggled. “That pantry is full of treats, and I mean full.”
“It’s not a matter of want,” said Ky.
Martine returned with an assortment of biscuits and some beef jerky. “Come here, my beautiful injured boy,” she said lovingly. Ky walked over and let himself be petted and treated.
“Shameless,” Mimi muttered under her breath.
They went to bed that night under the cover of an orange city haze. Mimi tried not to think of the blankness of the days ahead, of her mid-week appointment with the neurologist that would likely go nowhere.
Ky knew they should debrief. But they’d have time for that tomorrow. For now he just lay next to her on the duvet, as a dog, as they met. She scratched him behind the ears.
“You like that, really?” she said. “Now that I know you’re a hero sent from another world to do battle with evil forces, I feel silly scratching you behind the ears.”
“A dog is a dog,” said Ky. “And to be scratched behind the ears is the most perfect feeling there is.”
In the morning they came down to breakfast. Martine was cheerful. She had made huge quantities of waffles. Mimi tried to not to act like it was her last day with Ky. Her limp was still there. She lingered around the breakfast table and then finally got up her resolve.
“I’m going to take a walk to the park,” Mimi said. They had planned their story for Martine and Mimi’s father. Ky would “run away” from the park. “I need to exercise this bad leg.”
Martine looked surprised but pleased. “Of course! Good idea. Want me to come?”
“No that’s all right. I’ll just, I’ll just take Ky.” It hurt her heart to say it, knowing it would be the last time.
“Okay, but don’t let him play too hard. He had a tough trip!”
“I won’t,” said Mimi. “I know he did.”
They left the house in silence. Mimi walked behind Ky. She could see his limp. She could hardly believe that two days ago Ky had almost been killed, and here they were, on a walk to the park, leash in hand. As they rounded the corner away from the house they came under the cover of a stand of pines. Ky looked around to make sure no one was watching and then turned in to a man. The leash fell to the ground. Mimi didn’t bother to pick it up. She wouldn’t need it. Ky’s change was graceful, but as a man, his gait was still stiff. They walked in silence together for a while, both nursing their injuries.
“We’re in bad shape,” said Mimi.
“Better than I expected, at least for me,” said Ky. His shirt rubbed where his side was sore.
“Ky, what happens with the blood?”
“Or-ta blood is forbidden.”
“Because it lets you control someone? I thought you could do that anyway.”
“We can create illusions; that’s not the same as control. With our blood we can control people without them even knowing, large groups, armies. There was a time when we targeted powerful people, arranged world events, like Hal was trying to do, back in the early days when Or-ta were more involved. We thought it was okay to control people because we could. But we couldn’t control ourselves. It was a shameful time. Many of us were like Henry, taking control wherever we could.”
“So you have to be really careful, I mean, with your blood.”
“We do. Or-ta are not commonly injured, though.”
“You get injured all the time.”
“We faced the most powerful enemy an Or-ta has faced in many years,” he said with a shrug.
“And won!” said Mimi.
Ky smiled. “And won.”
“So it’s in your code of laws not to use your blood anymore?”
“Well, there have always been taboos on the blood. Since anyone can remember, it has been forbidden to use it for seduction or to force a suicide. But controlling armies, politicians? That was fair game until the code. Of course, the world was different then. There wasn’t the same kind of global power. There were empires, though.”
“Did you ever control an empire?”
“No, I’m too young.”
“Me too.”
“Well, really, you have a certain kind of empire, something you now call a ‘brand.’”
She laughed. “My brand? That’s over. Even if I could do it with my illness, I don’t want to. I don’t know how I would start doing something else, though. I’m so famous for being what my father would call a ‘ditz.’ We humans should have a code like your code, except ours would be against doing stupid things when you’re young.”
“I think you do. I just think your young don’t pay attention to it.”
“Would it be better to be like Oskar? Just become your parents?”
“That also comes at a price.”
“It might have been better for me. My ‘brand,’ the show. It seems silly to me now. I thought I was making art, kind of.”
“Maybe you were. Art has a life of its own. Even your own creation doesn’t need your continued approval to be art.”
“It certainly doesn’t need my a
pproval to play over and over on television. But it’s not like I’m ashamed of it. I’m just done with it.”
“I can see how that would be the case.”
“No you can’t. You’re like a superhero. You cannot relate to me at all.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Ky laughed. “Am I allowed to admire you?”
“Maybe, I’ll let you know.” She smiled, and then her voice changed to concern. “What will happen to the senator and all those people who drank the blood?”
“Hopefully nothing.” Ky’s voice showed that he shared her concern.
“I took a sip. I spit it out.”
Ky looked at her worried for a moment. “I think Henry would have tried to get you to do something if he could have controlled you; he wanted to finish me, so we would know. He could have sent you back upstairs. I suppose he could even have had you stab me.”
“Yikes!”
“He knows I wouldn’t…”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Fight back,” Ky finished quickly. “But that is worrying. I’m glad you had the good sense to spit it out.”
“I poured the rest of the glass on a plant and it died instantly. It was crazy. It was like a cartoon.”
“Money isn’t good for everything,” Ky laughed. “Despite its almost universal appeal.”
“It makes me wonder about my life,” said Mimi. “Am I a bad person, just for being rich? Just for liking being rich? Is Dad? Actually, I’m not sure Dad likes being rich, but he is.”
“At least he’s not out for world domination.”
“No; I may have been for a while, but not now. And now that I’m rich and very ill, now I’m really a mess. I’m like the person everybody wants to be and nobody wants to be at the same time.” She kicked thoughtfully at tufts of grass.
“Do you want to be you?”
“I used to love being me. Then I hated it. Now I have mixed feelings about it, but mostly I’m afraid.” She paused and then said, “I’m afraid to move forward.”
Ky laughed. Mimi was surprised, but he said, “But you’re not afraid of taking out a magical super-villain at the risk of your own life.”
“I guess when the right thing to do smacks you in the face, you just kind of do it. Still, I hope Henry isn’t secretly controlling me. That’s really not, well, not what a girl wants, if you know what I’m saying.”
“He can’t control you from Or-ta. Plus I think if he were controlling you, you’d feel ill. When someone is controlling you like that, if they go away and don’t give you direction, you feel as if all the color has been sucked out of the world.”
“So the senator and his wife and all those party guests can resign themselves to being depressed for the rest of their lives?”
“Fortunately they had very little, but in essence, yes, they’ll always feel as though something is missing. Once you are bound to someone, their absence creates a longing for which there is no contentment.”
“I guess there are worse fates, like, if Henry had stayed around and they were his zombies. Ooooh, I really don’t want to be a zombie!”
“Well, you don’t look like a zombie; you look fine. You actually look like you have more of a healthy glow than I’ve seen you with yet.”
“I guess I’m adjusting to my new normal. The limp, the pain, the seizures. They just are what they are. They’re not everything I think about. Okay, they’re still a lot of what I think about,” she admitted. “But it’s changing slowly. Maybe I’ll be ready to make ditzy art again soon, who knows?”
“It’s entirely up to you.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Mimi, I’m really grateful for what you did for me, me and all of humanity.”
“You’re welcome?” She looked away from him. Neither of them said it, but she knew it was time for him to leave. The park was thickly green, and yet still gave off a slight crackly, California dryness, as if it could catch fire any minute. The sky was a high, light, hazy blue. Standing there with Ky, she thought she’d never seen the park before, never seen anything before she met him. How would she live even a semi-normal life knowing that there was magic everywhere? She had partially lied about her new normal. Her new normal was Ky. She couldn’t admit it to him, but she didn’t know how she’d hold up once he flew away.
Ky spoke gently, almost as though he had read her mind. “Mimi, you can have those things that you want, the handsome husband, the kids. You don’t have to do the show, but you can if you want to. Yes, you are very ill. But don’t ever think you have nothing left to give.”
She watched him walk toward a big oak tree, transform into a crow, fly up into the branches, look back at her, and then fly away. The strangest sensation came over her, as though she were flying with him and the world came into sharp focus. She thought she could see all the way down to the ocean and into the ocean, the fish in it, the sand falling away to the dark blue depths. She thought she could see up to the mountains where Ky circled around and was flying east. She could sense the weather, the cold, the wind at her back. There were colors she had never seen. She remembered back to the night when she picked him up from under Henry’s library window, it was the same feeling. She was tempted to dive into the feeling, to follow Ky, but she shook her head to shake the feeling away. Colors returned to normal. The park was there, crackly, hazy, present. It was time for a new life, a whole new life. His words rang in her ears. Don’t ever think you have nothing left to give.
Thank You
I’d like to thank my mother who very lovingly and enthusiastically edited all the books and stories I wrote in grade-school, and this one.
Kate and Laura Abbott, Jennifer Zurick, Mary-Kat Cone, Rebecca Wilson who has saved my life a thousand times, Brooke Parkhurst, Arthur Gillett, Terry Peterson, Lauren Peacock, Erin and Jon St. John, Lorran Garrison, Yvette Osborne, Heather Lukacs, Uncle Stuart, Walter Corbiere III, Michelle Treviño, Professor Thomas, Professor Menkhaus and Professor Hernandez-Chiroldes who wrote me the kindest words a student has ever read: “You are a writer.”
Mrs. Kellogg, Coach Wallach, Fannie Chase, Terry Schreiber, Pat Souney-all those sweet sayings about teachers transforming your life, they are true.
For the most salient piece of advice ever given, I’d like to thank the late Greta Fertik.
Thanks Kylin Witte for being a legend.
For my continued good health I’d like to thank Dr. P, Julie Hwang, Peilee Ren, Robin Snyder, Ginger Danz, Rebecca Snow, Mariah Hibarger, Jim Maxwell, Ocean, Kate Lukacs, Jenny Becksted, Luke Hrabosky for the half days, Carlos Plumley for providing a cello in my darkest moment, Markus and my remarkable dog Pip.
And I’d like to thank my father for loving to travel with me. Pip wants to thank you for the delicious hotel breakfasts.
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