They were almost there, making good time. Follett was beginning to glow inside his implacable clinker shell. It was all only a few miles away, and this was the best road they had been on in months.
Tarrant rode forward until he was abreast of Follett, and he said, “It maketh funny noises.”
“So what is unusual there?”
“Alvarez could be right, it might be hungry or starving. I didn’t trust Calca back there to give it his best. He was too webbed up in his brother’s disappearance.”
“Umph!”
“Nothin’ to lose, Captain.”
Follett, in irritated slow motion, pulled on the reins of his horse and brought it to a halt, waiting for the others to catch up. When they were alongside him, he spoke to Alvarez. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s leaking and talking in many voices.”
“Saying what?”
“Difficult to hear, but stuff about not getting there alive.”
“Jesus!” exclaimed Follett.
“Let me be its next Steeping. I have what it needs,” begged Alvarez.
“Thou art very keen to do this. Why?”
“This will be my last time, and I saved the best for now.”
“Wants to cleanse thy shitty soul before we get back into the world, is it?”
“And make sure this Blessing here is full to the brim before we get paid.”
Follett squinted at the man to whom he had given trust over the Oracle and nodded.
“This is the last bit of wilderness. Do your worst, but do it quickly.”
Alvarez looked deep into the box of bones. He decided to dredge up and expose the one thing he had buried deeper than anything else in his disgraceful life. To drag it out into the light so that he could see each detail and squeeze it until it gave up its hidden vapor of memory.
“I say it clear, I say it only this once, then I will be free, and you will be fed. But it might choke you:
“ ’Twas in a box like this, a room, a cell.
“Twenty years ago I ate an angel.
“I had arrived on the island of Chergui off the coast of Ifrı¯qiyyah, in a deep and stupid state of intoxication. I had been bewildered by alcohol and sanctified by opium. The island was no more than a hump of sand in the warm sea, only a few feet above the water, which was mostly calm. I say all this only to summon the place into my heart. To find the exact hurt, wanting to taste it again.
“It was a desolate place. A simple place. Hot and dry as a bone, with just enough water to drink, and chickens and octopuses to eat. Nothing much grew there except palms and saltbushes. A perfect place to hide, nobody ever went there. Of course, there was a church hole—a convent, tiny and run by a species of women without moisture, grace, or hope. There is a level below all humanity where those cursed with being human always find themselves. I was there with them. Barefoot. Stepping off the painted boat into the warm sea and onto the warm sand.
“The convent was the only place to stay, and surprisingly, I was allowed in for just one night. But that was enough to damn my soul forever.
“They used clay pots, rough terra-cotta vases, to catch octopuses on that island. Passive fishing, it was. They sank the vases in the sea, offering the creatures a home…sometimes with bait. Octopuses like enclosed spaces, away from the tides of the worlds.
“But on that fateful night, a great gibleh was coming out of the desert, heated into the speed that sucks out the madness of men. There were two unused cells in the convent. One was given to me; the other I was not allowed to see. While I was sleeping and the wind was at its highest, the nuns removed the straw roof of the other room and lit tapers of exquisite perfume: agarbatti of the Atharva Veda. I was near naked and unwashed, and it was in my dreams that I realized I was the bait. I awoke when the nuns started singing. I have never said these words before, and I will never say or hear them again:
“Forever will I tether thee, forever.
Tides tides o’ moon
scythe thy ocean wide
hither to this clay chest
thy feast shall abide.
“Forever will I tether thee, forever.
Taste taste o’ sun
with this song divide
thy heart’s breath
in my mouth abide.
Forever will I tether thee, forever.
“Thus the angel was called, battered and damaged, into the clay-lined room. I broke open the door to the sounds of thrashing wings and the guttural cries of the violent nuns. What I saw in that room, I will never forget: The creature was gushing ink, blue-black ink, against the dry walls. The three nuns were soaked in it. The entire room was splattered and blurred with ink and smoke, and then blood as I ripped the wicked women away from their crime. At the center of the wings and ink was a white mist, squid-soft and helpless. I stopped the nuns’ defilement of the unknown creature. I broke one over my knee and strangled another. The third one died when I beat her ugly head to mush against the ocher walls.
“When I awoke from my fatigue, I took stock of what was around me. The limp white body of the angel had been ripped from the wings, which had become shadows, ink splatters and nuns’ garments slashed and torn about the red-clay room. I carried the bodily remnant of the angel out of that squalor and laid it on a table. It was beyond repair…and so I ate it, raw, to relieve it and my hunger. The sweetness of that puttylike flesh I will never forget. I have never found anything like it. I have tried many women, but they are bland. I would give everything to obtain it again. Everything else is numb on my tongue.”