“No, stay there. This might be dangerous.”
“Dangerous? What are you doing?”
“Please be quiet. I need to concentrate.”
Nereida sighed and folded her arms across her chest. Culann shut his eyes and focused on the sand sliding over his toes. He narrowed his focus and felt the individual grains as he pressed his feet into the bottom. Then he concentrated on just one grain of sand at the end of his big toe.
“Where is it?” he whispered.
The grain of sand told him.
Culann hopped forward until his left foot struck the unmistakable surface of the orb. He took a breath and pushed himself beneath the surface, using his damaged limbs to propel to the bottom. He slid his good left hand under the orb and clamped down on it from above with his right. He strained against the water pressure above to wrest it from the seabed.
When his head broke the surface, Nereida had cast off Julia’s bathrobe and was preparing to dive into the water.
“Stay there,” Culann said with a gasp of exertion.
She scowled at him, but complied. He hopped back to the pier, just barely keeping his mouth above the surface, while cradling the orb to his belly. The extra weight slowed him down, and his eyes focused on Nereida’s undisguised expression of impatience as he made his way to her.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Just something I dropped. Now please stay back.”
He reached the pier, which stood a good two feet above the waterline. With one great surge, Culann kicked his legs and hefted the orb up and onto the pier before sliding back into the water.
“What is that thing?” Nereida asked, inching closer.
“Don’t touch it. I’ll be right up.”
With another surge, Culann shot up, grabbed the edge of the pier with his left hand, and pulled himself up so that his elbows rested on the planks while the rest of him dangled over the edge. He caught his breath for a few moments and then kicked with his legs and straightened his arms, but his right hand couldn’t bear the weight. He dropped back to his elbows and resumed dangling off the side.
“You need some help?” Nereida asked with a smirk.
“Yes,” Culann replied. “But please don’t touch the orb. I am not joking — it’s very dangerous.”
She cast a wary glance at the orb before crouching down and grabbing Culann under the right arm. He pushed with his left arm and kicked his legs while she pulled.
After a brief struggle, the two knelt on the deck, panting side by side over the orb.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but stay back.”
Culann sat before the orb as it rested on the dock. The symbols had once again changed. They’d formed into six stick-figures of dogs, like those seen in cave paintings, with triangular features emphasizing the teeth. He held his hands on each side like a fortune-teller with a crystal ball, massaging the ethereal etchings on its surface. Thick, gray clouds blew in from the sea, enveloping the sun. Nereida knelt a few feet away, craning to see what he was doing. Thunder rumbled all around them, and rain poured down. Culann focused all of his attention on his fingertips as they worked their way across the strange symbols covering the orb. After a few moments, he felt ten tiny jolts of electricity, one in each finger. The orb was listening. Culann just needed to figure out what to say.
“Okay,” he started, “let’s just get something straight off the bat. I’m not like the Captain.”
“Who’s the Captain?” Nereida asked. “What are you talking about?”
Culann ignored her and continued, “I am not trying to dominate you or harness your power. I just have a simple request.”
“Who are you talking to? Are you talking to that thing?”
“Please, I am begging you, don’t hurt her. Let her live.”
“Are you talking about me?” Nereida rose to her feet. “Are you some kind of fucking psycho?”
“Please,” Culann continued. “You spared me, you spared the dogs. Please, spare her. She is just a child. She has done nothing wrong. She is innocent.”
The electricity returned, stronger this time. It coursed through Culann’s fingers, up his arms, and into his brain. Pain drilled into the base of his skull and radiated through his head. Black amoebae swam through his eyes as if he’d stared too long at the sun. He gritted his teeth so hard pieces of enamel broke off his molars and fell into his dry throat.
The dogs bayed wildly from shore while Nereida’s fearful cries filled his ears.
The pain relented, and Culann hunched over the orb on the brink of unconsciousness. Nereida spun around and ran back to shore. She passed Alphonse midway down the dock. The dog continued towards Culann despite having been previously admonished to remain ashore with the other dogs who dutifully sat at the water’s edge. The dog stared with such intensity that Culann wondered if he was about to be eaten. The rain came down hard, slapping the deck with each drop. Alphonse stopped just before Culann, his eyes glowing like blue lightning, and opened his jaws.
“You would bargain with a god?” Alphonse growled.
“Holy shit.”
Alphonse bared his fangs but said nothing.
“You are the Dog-God?” Culann said after regaining his composure.
“I have many names. To the Egyptians I was Anubis, the jackal-headed king of the underworld. To the Greeks I was Cerberus, the guardian of the dead. The Aztecs called me Xolotl, bringer of lightning and death.”
“I am Culann Riordan, teacher of English.”
“I know who you are,” Alphonse snapped. “You want this child’s life. What have you to offer me in return?”
“Uh, my soul?”
“You must offer me something I do not already possess.”
“What do you want?”
Alphonse drew back his lips into a ferocious smile.
“I will tell you a story.”
4
“One of your philosophers once said ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.’”
“That was Voltaire,” Culann said.
Alphonse growled from deep in his belly. Lightning slashed across the sky behind him.
“Sorry, continue.”
“This Voltaire was right. The gods are a human invention, but that makes us no less real. My power is nevertheless nothing compared to the power of human imagination, which managed to turn matter into energy after all. Even I, whose faintest growl is thunder, whose panting creates hurricanes, whose bite rends the sky with lightning, can only marvel at the awesome displays of death your kind unleashed at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl. It is the power of human imagination that gave rise to me soon after your ancestors dropped from the trees and began stalking the savannah.
Even as they slew the beasts around them, these early hunters observed the remarkable physical abilities of the creatures around them. One day, an ancient hunter saw a pack of wolves in the distance. The pack chased an antelope into a copse of trees where another wolf lay in hiding. The hunter said in a long-forgotten tongue that he wished to be as cunning as that wolf. With this first prayer, I was born.
“With each prayer, I grew stronger. For millennia, I was worshipped by your kind. I birthed the storms, ruled the underworld, guarded the dead.
“And then came Moses and Jesus and Mohammed. The old gods began to fade.
We clung to the last vestiges of our power until Voltaire’s followers convinced the world that there were no gods at all. The flames of my fellows extinguished one by one. I endeavored to control my own destiny. I vested all of my power into an object and dropped it from the heavens. A man was to find it and wield its awesome power. The others would fear this man. They would pray—to me—for protection. My power would grow until I became again as I once was.