Montanha Do Pico

November 11, this year
Over the Azores, Portugal
3:35pm AZOT

Three choppers lift into the sky and vault southwest over the ocean. In the middle one Edwin Newirth holds his father’s hand and watches the land slip away until all beneath is water. The helicopter headset is overlarge on him. Loche adjusts the microphone to the boy’s lips and straightens the headband.

“Can you hear me?” he asks.

“Yes,” Edwin answers. His little voice is a stab of midrange tone, punctuated by a quick crackle of white noise.

“Why won’t mom fly with us?” he asks.

Loche squeezes the boy’s hand gently, “I thought it would be fun for just you and me to fly together. You’ve never been in a helicopter before.”

“No. It makes my tummy feel funny.”

“Mine, too.”

“There’s mom!” Edwin says and waves.

Loche sees her face in the window of the chopper flying beside them—fingers spread wide against the glass. Even Helen had chosen to fly separated from Edwin, however reluctant. None of the others wanted to be near the child. At least, no immortal. The Rathinalya was too much.

“Are we going to Egypt now?”

“Yes,” Loche says. “I expect we’ll be landing at an airstrip to board a plane, soon.”

“How far is Egypt?”

“I don’t know exactly—but it is almost half way around the world from where we are.”

“Is it as far as Spokane?” The boy is still watching his mother.

Loche smiles. “You mean from our house in Sagle, Idaho to Spokane?”

“Yes.”

“A little longer than that drive, I expect.”

They pass over another island and launch again out over the ocean.

“Why are we going to Egypt, Dad?”

Loche feels for his shoulder bag at his feet. He pulls the strap up and lays it over his knees. His umbrella is beside him on the seat.

“We’re going to meet someone.”

“Who?”

Loche squints. My dead brother, he thinks. “My brother,” he says.

Then Loche hears his son say, The Painter.

He flinches at the sound of Edwin’s voice—and then at the words he had said. The headset delivers a strangely clear and compressed sound into the ear, but these words of Edwin probed deeper, as if they appeared in Loche’s mind. He scowls, trying to determine if it was indeed an aural sensation. Then, how could Edwin have used the word, Painter? Especially in the context of Loche’s brother, Basil?

When he looks at Edwin, the little boy is staring up at him. A field of stars sparkles across the boy’s face—

The headphones crackle, and Edwin says, “Who’s your brother?”

Loche searches the boy’s expression. The boy god is hiding there somewhere.

“Dad?”

“You haven’t met him,” Loche answers.

Loche recalls the Journal’s description of his first meeting with Basil. He had written of him standing on the beach outside of the cabin at Priest Lake, Idaho. Loche went down to confront him—to ask him why he was loitering there. Shortly after, Helen and Edwin came down the path, and Loche introduced his family to Basil. In the journal, Edwin did meet Basil.

Loche says, “Maybe you have met him. Do you remember the man with the long hair and the brown jacket on the beach—at the cabin—a few weeks ago?”

“Yes.” Edwin answers. “Yes, I remember.”

It continues to amaze and frighten Loche—this twisted creation at the tip of his pen. He shakes his head. Dread and joy quarrel in his abdomen. As each day passes he has trouble dividing his written account and experiential memory. If he doesn’t focus on the words, he can easily believe he met Basil there on the beach, the autumn chill, the reds and golds wreathing the still lake—Basil standing there, his hands in his pockets. Loche suppresses a smile when he thinks of Basil’s first words. “The big, deep heavy,” he had said. Loche can’t help but to allow himself to grin, remembering Basil’s next utterance, “Sorry if I’ve freaked you out—not my intention.”

I’ve freaked myself out, Loche thinks.

Loche feels for the leather strap of his bag hanging over his knees. Within the bag is his small daily diary, a water bottle, protein bars, and most importantly, the Red Notebook—still unopened—still unread.

The next island is nearing—a floating garden plot on the wide blue. Rising from the center is a single mountain. It overshadows the small city at its foot. The high summit appears flat, save for a lonely pinnacle of rock. As the helicopters close distance, the strange peak begins to take the shape of a conical anomaly.

George’s voice from the next chopper crackles in the speakers, “Mount Pico, Loche. You see?”

The rooftops and farmlands are left behind. Ahead, the land is pitching skyward. The forward windshield fills with the rocky colossus, and the three choppers take altitude, hurtling upward to the snow dusted apex.

The smaller pinnacle, massive in its own right, still puzzles Loche. “Where are we going, George?”

There is no response.

As the chopper rises to the top and hovers, Loche can see four large tents crowding the base of the pyramid shaped structure.

“What is that?” Loche asks. He marvels at the strange peak that dominates the northern section of the height.

George’s laughter vibrates his eardrums. “That is our ride, Poet,” he says.