“What about Eli?”
“What about him? I’ve always felt a strange connection to him. Not like mother and child but something else. I can’t explain, and he’s too young to do it for me, but Eli and I have a relationship that is built on different foundations. This is one of the things I realised while I waited for my life to begin again, and I wondered what that made me. Was I some sort of a monster?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
Sonia let go of his hand and paced again, lightly stroking the animal effigy. Noah watched closely for signs of the woman he’d once known, once been married to and shared a child with. But it wasn’t her. It wasn’t who he remembered. This woman, this person in the shape of Sonia, was a stranger, and he did not understand her. He could not predict her. She had his son hidden somewhere, and Noah knew then that Rachel was right: she would never tell him where.
“You can keep your crazy cult for all I care. I just want our son back.”
“Noah, you don’t understand anything. You’ve never understood anything. That’s always been your problem. You move without thinking about what you’re doing, about who you’re hurting. You’re like a blind bull, and I hate to tell you this but you can’t always get what you want.”
“Where is he?” He was becoming more agitated, his head spinning on his shoulders. “Where’s that fucking Manillo gone?”
“Noah, stop it. Look at me.”
“I want Eli. I need him and I’m not leaving without him. Nobody is kidnapping my son!”
“I told you: he’s not kidnapped. Everything is fine. Eli needs to stay here with me. I need him more than you ever could.”
But Noah was not listening. His fists clenched in rage, he screamed for Manillo to show his face. All the Tletliztlii were watching, and they started to laugh, and their laughter only further fuelled his anger. He grabbed Sonia by the wrist hard so she could not struggle away and jerked her close. Her breath was foetid but barely registered through his bloody haze.
“You could never need him as much as I do. Take me to him now, or—”
“Or what? What are you going to do? Besides turn around and leave? Save yourself: Get the fuck out of here and take care of the other Eli you have on the way.”
Noah stood and punched one of the misshapen piñatas with all his strength, breaking it in half.
“I don’t want another Eli. I want mine!”
“You can’t have him,” she said. Laughing.
Noah’s brain shut down, unable to comprehend what Sonia was saying, what she was doing, how far he had travelled only to be blocked by a wall of insanity. He heard the crying of children filling his mind, even though he knew their voices couldn’t be real. But the cries only grew, intensified, bursting his skull amid Sonia’s mocking laughter. He squeezed her wrist tighter, squeezed his eyes shut tighter still, trying to surface in the tidal wave of anger flooding over him. He was drowning in it, deaf and blind and dumb and full of hatred. He opened his eyes long enough to see Manillo had returned, and his enormous fist was travelling straight at Noah’s face.
Noah remembered little after that. Just an endless series of fists and feet raining down on his crumpled body.
“Where’s Eli?” he tried to spit out, but the blood in his mouth choked him, and he could barely emit a gurgling cough. “Oh, God,” he cried, and Sonia laughed even harder.
“You stupid man. Don’t you get it? There is no child of a hundred gods. He was aborted; never born. There is no God.”
She then spat on him and kicked him hard in the face. He felt the clammy lithe arms of unconsciousness grab hold of him from the cold darkness below, and they pulled him close into her waiting bosom.
V. This Blasted Heath
Noah and Eli lay on the soft green grass, staring up at the clouds slowly moving across a picture-perfect sky.
“See that one? That’s a horse, Eli. What sound do horsies make?”
Eli brayed, then laughed uproariously. Noah laughed too, the feeling of his son’s body wriggling against him filling him with never-ending bliss. Noah couldn’t remember how long they’d been lying there—it seemed like forever—but he never wanted it to end. Couldn’t imagine the world any better.
“Are you two going to goof off in the grass all day?”
Noah rolled over and looked up at Rachel sitting on her wooden chair. She wore a deep, knowing smile and had one hand over the edge of the crib beside her, the other wrapped around her full belly. She sat in the afternoon light, the nursery around her so bright he wondered if he should draw the blinds.
“We’re seeing animals playing in the air!” Eli shouted, then cackled at his own antics. Rachel smiled too, then gently shushed him.
“You’re going to wake the baby, Eli.”
He laughed again.
“You don’t want to do that, do you?”
Only laughter. Noah grabbed the boy around the waist and threw him into the air.
“Of course you don’t. That’s my favourite boy. That’s my favourite Eli.”
Then they both laughed, both rolled on the green grass, and Noah could smell it on them like the smell of summer, and knew that if he kept rolling nothing would ever change.
But there was a noise, the sound of a tree branch breaking. Noah put Eli down and looked at the beach but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just Sonia walking along the shore, holding the hand of a small child he knew looked familiar, but could not place.
The park around them was crowded with people, all standing on the grass barefooted, all staring up at the sky. Some wore old clothes, worn away to almost nothing, while others were dressed in suits and evening dresses. All stared up at the clouds expectantly.
“They must be looking for the horsies too,” Noah said, but when he turned he found Eli had vanished. Noah’s smile faded. “Eli?” he called, looking for someone who might have his son. But no one would look at him. They each held a small child by the hands, all staring upward. Noah cast a glance too, long enough to see that the white clouds were moving past so swiftly he barely recognised their shapes.
“Eli, where are you?” he called out.
More people crowded the beach, packed to its edges, some up to their knees in water, and when he called out Eli’s name they gathered around him, all holding a small faceless child by the hands, cutting him off.
“Eli!” he screamed, squeezing his way through the throng of immovable bodies. Through gaps he saw Sonia in the distance, wispy auburn air fluttering as she led a small boy by the hand, a small curly-haired boy dressed in his favourite green cap and blue Oshkoshbigosh overalls. Somewhere behind Noah was the sound of Rachel crying, the crackling sound of paper being crumpled, and a heat that blanketed everything, charring bodies and the ground to deep black ash. Noah was thrown forward by the wave, landing in the darkened nursery. Rachel had gone, the crib was empty, the shelves with nothing left. There was just a window, a large rectangle framing the blasted heath beyond. The sky was a deep blue, the air so clear he could make out every detail of the world beyond in excruciating detail. Insects creeping, rodents scurrying, grains of sand blowing though mounds of ash, and in the distance speeding toward him at an impossible rate was a column of black flame, stretching from the ground upward into oblivion. The dervish spun and spun, consuming everything in its path. And it was aiming straight toward the house Noah was hiding within. But where was Eli? A mewling sound behind him, coming from the crib, and Noah felt the joy of relief. He turned around and put his hands into the crib, so full of shadows it was like putting his hands into a well of tar. He felt something squirm in his grip, resist him, but he struggled to get Eli free. A small body broke the surface, covered in paper and shaped like some amorphous, brightly coloured animal. It mewed again, staring upward with painted-on eyes before catching fire and burning to cinders in Noah’s quivering hands.