“Year after year the corn-spirit is slain at harvest and born again when the new seed is sown.”
— Sir James Frazer
The hem of Ms. Owen’s black dress brushed against ripples of dirt as she crossed the freshly tilled field below the Roofless Church. A funerary veil screened her face as if she were a widow — she was in a way, since before the Civil War. (The covering was supposedly to keep the sun out of her eyes.) In the distance, a tractor pulled a row of yellow plastic hoppers dropping corn seed.
Ms. Owen was out “herping” for snakes — a common activity for her on the rare days the Flower Club didn’t meet. Phiale was trudging behind the teacher across the fertile lowlands after being asked along for a “discussion about her future.” Although the day was dry, the scent of rain filled her nose as their boots disturbed the soft, alluvial soil.
“I understand you’re having a tough time acclimating to our academy,” Ms. Owen said, using a hooked snake pole as a walking stick. “And I realize it’s difficult to develop a sense of loyalty to a group that’s already bonded and sees you as an outsider. But it’s not impossible — you just have to try harder … talk to the other girls more, quit missing meetings, make sacrifices for Beauty and Botany … and ask yourself: Are you a blossom or a deadhead that needs snipping?”
“Snipping, I guess,” Phiale said.
Ms. Owen stopped and lifted her veil so the girl could see her scowl. “I suggest you find a new club at the beginning of next school year. Good day.” She sniffed and resumed walking toward a line of trees along a bend in the Wabash.
“Wait!” Phiale shouted, following after her. “The snake from the other day … the one with the red mark on its head.”
“What about it? Did you see it again?”
Quite a bit of it, in fact, the girl thought, but said, “Eh … not sure … maybe where the creek comes out. Is that what you’re looking for? What kind is it? Can I come with you?”
“Well, I guess … it’s good you’re at least interested in something. As for the snake, I’d never seen its kind before — although there are legends … ”
They reached the riverbank to the sound of tiny frogs splashing into the water for safety. “We’re looking for a hole at least a couple of inches in diameter, and dead skin — I also have an eye out for feces of a certain size.”
“Does the legend say anything about the snake getting bigger when you pray to it?” Phiale asked, standing on a sycamore root clawing at the soil like a giant, skeletal hand.
Ms. Owen looked up from jotting in her field journal. “As a scientist, I don’t take such tales literally — but where did you hear about that?”
“Didn’t exactly hear about it.”
“You are difficult to talk to. There have been historical accounts — mostly the pseudoscientific pronouncements of a certain professor Rafinesque — of a black fire snake protecting a sunken chest of gold in the Wabash … and the serpent was also involved with some kind of ritual — going all the way back to the end of the last glacial period. It supposedly guarded an underground city. Atlanteans, or some such nonsense.”
“Atalans?”
“It’s a shame my father is still allowed to teach. He talks about spiritualism now with the same enthusiasm he once had for creating a perfect society. What I really worry about is you impressionable Owls — that you might start believing him.”
“Do you think Mr. Owen will be arrested?”
“For being a bad teacher?”
“No, for NAGPRA violations. That’s what agent Booker kept saying she was going to slap me with.”
“My lord, you say such nonsense … anyway, I know who you’re talking about. And I plan to lodge a complaint with the Smithsonian for the language she used when I asked if my classes could tour the van.
“From what I’ve gathered, though, they showed up because of that photo. Sienna and my father have both vigorously denied any involvement — he’s just an old spiritualist … who’s sadly forsaken rationalism,” she sighed. “Regardless, it all has to be an absurd mistake — to think anyone would implicate an Owen in such an outrage.”
* * *
“No Sienna, that’s a fibula — it goes here,” Mr. Owen said, tapping a larger bone with his cane, “next to this tibia. I imagine they’ll be upset if we don’t put them back together correctly before we reanimate them.”
A row of more than a dozen skeletons ranging 7-12 feet long lined the granary floor. From high above in the exposed rafters, Tinker Bell watched the Seance Club buzz around the expansive room, some brushing off swords, axes, shields and helmets — while others strained and grunted as they placed the artifacts on the skeletons.
One of the giants’ hands had just arrived. That was actually why the fairy was at the old grain storage building in the first place. She’d been zipping toward downtown when she noticed a six inch skeletal finger poking out of a canvas sack — wagging back and forth like it was trying to tell Tinker Bell she shouldn’t be flying alongside the golf cart driven by Bellatrix. But that just encouraged her.
When Bellatrix reached the drive leading to the vine-covered structure — mostly concealed by trees on a corner lot across from a cluster of reconstructed Rappite cabins — she got out and pulled back a chain with a “No Trespassing” sign. Then she continued up a ramp into the five-story granary through double wooden doors set into a thick sandstone wall. Above the entrance, the stone turned to brick up to the tile roof. Father Rapp’s people had built it in 1818 to store enough grain to survive a year of drought prophesied for some time before Armageddon. Eventually, after the world failed to end, Robert Owen bought it along with the rest of the town’s buildings; it eventually passed down to the history teacher.
Through a window from where she sat, Tinker Bell could keep an eye on Galata Antiquities at the corner of Granary and Main. She smiled when the Smithsonian agents marched into the shop.
Earlier that afternoon, the agents received an anonymous tip written in sparkly ink informing them that Galata recently made an interesting sale. An out-of-town dealer had purchased an oversized, narrative-destroying footprint in a limestone slab (an angel’s? Sasquatch’s? Atalan’s?) along with burial mound treasures such as an emerald and giant sword.
Before the door shut behind the agents, Tinker Bell managed to flutter out a sparrow hole in the granary, down the street and into the store.
Out came their badges. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way — easy for us, I mean — either way is going to be hard for you,” agent Booker told Sam, the shopkeeper. His small, pale hands were polishing the bone handle of an antique pruning knife — licks of lank black hair clung to his forehead.
Sam squinted at their IDs. “The Smithsonian … how boring.”
“Put down the knife, sir,” Fafner commanded.
Sam looked incredulously at the curved blade, not even three inches long. “What’s the meaning of all this?”
“Tase the freak,” Booker said.
“You bet.” He lit Sam up with 1,200 volts.
Tinker Bell, who’d been hiding in a Victorian hat festooned with dead hummingbirds, felt simultaneously impressed by the audacity of the act and bad that her plan had led Sam to his sorry state on the floor moaning and twitching. But she used the commotion to her advantage, flying to the counter and dipping the tip of a ruby, iridescent feather into an open inkwell. She jotted in the business ledger under that day’s date: “Mr. Jones, St. Louis, misc. items, $445,000,” and then darted behind a bolt of French toile.
The agents moved almost as quickly: Booker dumping drawers full of paper records into a duffel bag, and Fafner scanning the ledger. He tapped it with his finger. “Here it is. There’s a Jones in the Midwest Ring, right? Based in Indiana, works out of Missouri too.”
“I know that scumbag,” his partner said. “These fake motherfuckers here aren’t worth our time. We’re taking down Jones. Let’s gas up the van.”
Sometimes when the Fates want something to happen, like for it to storm hard enough to knock out an electric grid (perhaps to set a scene), they’ll choose a circuitous route … seemingly taking pride in it like a billiards player whose ball ricochets everywhere before finding its mark — in this case Indiana’s bottom-left corner pocket.
Booker slung the duffel over her meaty shoulder and plowed out the door — and into Phiale, who, now unburdened by her Flower Club membership, had been walking past with a spring in her step as she returned from herping with Ms. Owen. Because of the way they twisted when they fell, the first to hit the pavement was the long bag, followed by the federal agent with the former Violet on top. Booker shoved Phiale off, heaved herself to her knees and lifted a hand as if to smack the girl.
“Slap that bitch!” Fafner screamed.
A feeling of such injustice swept over Phiale that a sudden plume of humidity blossomed westward out over the Illinois prairie, setting off a chain of events that led to a line of thunderstorms later boomeranging back to the source.
“I was just going to help her up,” Booker said, and did, grinning. “Everybody here’s fake, anyway. Let’s roll — the trail’s hot.”
About an hour later, the Smithsonian van was barreling along I-64 toward St. Louis when it sustained major karmic damage from golf-ball-sized hail.
* * *
Darkness had fallen by the time thunder rumbled into New Harmony. The third floor common room in Phiale’s residence hall was typically empty, being at the top of the stairs with tattered furniture and a smallish TV screen. However, that Friday night, Belle wanted to share a film about sinister fairies with Phiale and Windi, lighting the room only with candles in brass holders, darkened with age.
Thalia already happened to be sitting there with the TV turned off when they arrived. “Watch whatever you want,” she said from back of the room, sunk into a duct-taped leather recliner. “What difference does it make.”
They sat down with their popcorn, and Belle cued the 2015 Irish movie The Hallow. “My parents would never let me watch something like this,” Windi said. Then, not too far into the film, she must have guessed the plot: “Belle, have you ever abducted an infant?”
“Too many to count.”
Thalia started weeping.
“She was just kidding … I think.”
“It’s not that.”
“What’s wrong then?” Windi asked with uncharacteristic concern.
“I got booted from Theater Club. ‘Midair assault on a mezzo-soprano,’ is what they called it in the report.”
“What a coincidence, I’m done with my club too … I guess. So’s Phiale.”
“That’s good — cults are pathetic,” Belle proclaimed.
“Some aren’t,” Thalia said.
“I mean except for Artemis ones.”
Later on, when a movie fairy was getting ready to poke out a lady’s eye with its long fingernail, the TV winked off. “Hell of a time to lose power!” Belle shouted. “This never happened when we got juice from the pyramids back in the day.”
“Great, and I have to use the bathroom,” Windi said. She grabbed a candle and swept through the door in a long white gown.
“Can’t you just wiggle your nose and bring the grid back up, or at least the TV?” Phiale suggested.
“Maybe, but that’s a lot of work … and so close to bedtime. Hopefully it won’t be out long.” But time crept by, and the TV remained a black pit. Shadows danced in the candlelight. The wind howled.
“Where’s Windi?” Thalia asked after a while.
“Yeah, we should check on her,” Phiale said. They scanned the bathroom in the dim light of their candles: no Windi — she wasn’t in her room, either.
“Maybe we should look in her … eh, club room,” Phiale suggested. Why did I just say that? The dork’s on her own at that point. But down the dark stairwell they went, bottoming out in a hallway with mostly unused rooms except for a few clubs that never needed to see the light of day (also including Chess and Esports, who hated each other with the single-minded passion of nerds).
“Do you know where it is?” Phiale asked.
“No clue,” Belle said. “Last time I was down here was right after this place was built … 1975, I think. Heard a Pet Rock Club had started up, and I couldn’t believe it. Had to check it out for myself. Not exactly the brightest girls in that one.”
“Do you always just make things up?” asked Thalia, who, like Windi had also taken to wearing a long, gauzy nightgown for some reason.
“No, they really were that dumb.”
They wandered the labyrinthine passageways, past cinderblock walls, overhead wires and rattling pipes. Small animals skittered outside the glow of their candlelight.
Belle cocked her head: “I hear voices.” She led them around a few more turns to a hallway that ended with a closed door with a dim light coming from behind it. Something brushed against Phiale’s cheek, and she gasped — a cloud of moths were zigzagging around their flames.
They blew out the candles and crept to the door to listen.
“We told you to quit associating with outsiders,” a girl hissed. “They’ll always try to pull you away … from jealousy. But you let them. You’re ungrateful.”
“No, they mean nothing to me,” Windi pleaded, making Thalia gasp.
“She’s not thinking straight,” Belle whispered.
Another voice from behind the door said, “You’re lying. That Violet you hang out with told me you’re finished with us — and that we’re a … a cult. How absurd!”
“Forgive me!”
“Don’t forget, the witch told us to touch the emerald — just to traumatize us,” added the other Monarch from the night before. “It was awful … poor Father! Did you touch it too, you horrid little Skipper? What did you see?”
Belle kicked in the door and said: “She saw you scum standing over her with a knife.”
Following closely behind the fairy into the room, Phiale first noticed hundreds of tea lights glowing on lab benches next to microscopes, test tubes, specimen trays and what looked like an altar, over which hovered a black, papier-mâché butterfly casting a gigantic shadow on the ceiling.
“You guys shouldn’t be here,” said Windi, her voice quivering. She was tied to a chair in front of thousands of butterflies pinned to the entire back wall, flanked by two cloaked captors. “We have our own ways.”
The dozen or so other club members gaped at the intruders in frozen horror. “These lunatics can’t be here!” one of them finally screamed. “Grab the nets!” So they did, but Belle plucked a bamboo skewer from a jar of preservatives and turned the poles into black snakes. Their ensuing screeches in the bowels of the basement sounded like a boiler ready to blow.
The fairy then struck Phiale’s candle with the skewer — and it turned into an archer’s bow. Then the fairy tapped her back, and a quiver appeared with three-foot steel pins, notched at the end.
“Like this,” Belle explained. She grabbed one of the shafts and turned her stick into a bow, which she used to fire the missile at one of the two members on either side of Windi. It hit her cloak but missed her body, pinning her to the wall. Belle repeated with the one on the other side, leaving the victim wriggling and wailing against the white wood paneling. “Try not to actually hit them … or whatever,” the sprite said and shrugged.
Phiale smiled and fired off a couple of her own pins, attaching the other club member’s cloak to the display with her in it (their fellow Butterfly Club devotees had abandoned them to the Fates by that point). Then she helped Thalia untie Windi as a snake slithered by.
“Honestly, you don’t have to save me,” she said. “This is kind of embarrassing, really.”
“Yeah, you really look like you want to be here,” Thalia responded, struggling with a knot.
“She’s obviously brainwashed,” Phiale chimed in. And generally clueless, she added to herself.
“No, it’s just kind of sweet how much they don’t want me to leave.”
“That’s all applesauce!” Thalia said, putting her hand on Windi’s knee. “You’re with us dolls now.”
Belle beamed. “The ’20s are roaring again.”
Part 1 of The Flame of Heraclitus is now lit on Kindle and in paperback. Check out Chapter 8, or catch up with the Prologue.
Rob Robill 