Lady Raven and The Black Wedding - eBook

Chapter 1: Metamorphosis

Isaac looked glumly at the grey Cadillac as it pulled into the driveway. “Is she coming over for dinner AGAIN? What is this, the third time this week?” Whatever was happening between Dr. Julia Nocturn and Uncle Ronnie was happening faster and more openly with every passing day. “If they start giving each other moony eyes again, I’m gonna be sick! Still, it’s hard to be down on the guy,” Isaac thought, “he seems so happy all the time now. Must be nice.” With a sigh, he pulled away from the window. He could hear the car door close, followed by a muffled conversation. Uncle Ronnie had been waiting by the door for her. 

“Those two are getting thick as thieves,” Isaac grumbled.  

Resigned, he closed his laptop, making Celeste’s face disappear. These days, Isaac often found himself looking up old news articles about the girl he had rescued. Celeste’s face was still blurry in his memory, but when he pulled up a picture, he felt connected to his past, to the man he used to be, and to a girl he had never known and never would. His new life felt strangely empty, though he was once more on the right side of society. After the incident, many people had recommended a life in law enforcement, but they didn’t know the kind of man he had to be to live that way. That part of him had bled away in a hospital bed. The anger and bitterness, it was they that had fuelled his mad workouts, and it was they that had led him straight to the devil—and the devil had bled him dry. What was Isaac Way without rage? 

As he stepped out of his room, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Sliding it open, he saw a text from Al Edgerton. It read: “Last chance. Get in tonight, and you still got a shot at matching against Jordain.” 

Isaac stared at the text until it swam before his eyes. It seemed so long ago that he had cared about winning matches at the Pit. Recovery from his injuries had been accelerated by the careful training and coaching Al had provided. However, the anger that had fuelled him had slowly dwindled, leaving nothing in its place. It had become harder and harder to show up. If Inessa was gone, why did he need to know how to fight? It was easier just to let it all go. The bare minimum kept Uncle Ronnie off his back. The bare minimum would get him into college just fine. From there, he could plod through life at some meaningless corporate kraken of a company, clocking in and out until he died. Fighting was hard. He got hurt. Doing nothing was easy. Nobody tried to punch him in the face when he did nothing. 

Putting off the inevitable decision, he slumped his way down the stairs. Ronnie and Julia were whispering intimately in the foyer. At the sound of his approach, they desisted in their starry-eyed communique, both grinning bashfully. Isaac almost smiled. 

Always the first to breach any silence, Uncle Ronnie piped up, “Julia brought over some asparagus, and I got some steak from Antony’s. I’m gonna fire up the grill, and Julia is gonna handle the oven. Should be a heck-of-a feast! You gonna join us, buddy?”

The invitation was so simple and kind that Isaac found himself forgetting his worries almost immediately in the promise of sweet savours and simple affections. 

“Steak!” he said in place of an answer. “That sounds awesome. Though I think you should let Dr. Nocturn cook it all.”

“Isaac,” she began, “I’d like it if you would call me Julia.”

This, too, was offered sincerely, and the kindness in the room put Isaac off balance. He felt like a bird trying to swim. 

“Oh… Señora Julia.”

“Hey, hey! That’s not what she meant, ese, but close enough!” Uncle Ronnie threw an arm around his shoulder and gave him a friendly squeeze. Since Isaac was a head taller than he was, the result was a little comical, but Uncle Ronnie didn’t try to take himself too seriously. He saved all his seriousness to ensure Isaac stayed on the straight and narrow.

“Thank you, Isaac,” Julia responded with a smile, “It would mean a lot to me if you would come to… like me, even as I like you.”

“Even as you ‘like’ old Ronnie, you mean,” he thought. He could see Ronnie beaming at her out of the corner of his eye, and he suddenly felt like puking. “Maybe I should go to the gym tonight, after all,” he thought.

“Ronald, I’m going to heat up the oven now,” she said as she breezed past the boys, moving towards the kitchen. “Have you started that book yet, Isaac?” she asked in passing.

Instead of tensing up, instead of a flash of anger, instead of any passion at all, Isaac felt… nothing. It was a strange counterpoint to his life before. “That woman is doing something to me…” he thought. 

Suddenly, he found it difficult to disappoint that quiet sincerity, while a lie did not seem appropriate either. With a rushed mumble, he said, “Sí, sí, the book, I left it upstairs. I like to carry it with me; I’ll get it…” Turning, he loped off to retrieve the book. He had not so much as looked at it since she first gave it to him. It was waiting on his dresser, brown leather, soft and sweet-smelling in his nostrils—and untouched. Refusing to look at it too closely, Isaac snatched his backpack off the floor and stuffed the impossible thing into it, hoping this would satisfy her. “I CAN’T read your book, Julia, I can’t… If I do, that would mean she was still alive, and that would mean… Going back into the dark.”

Sitting on the bed, eyes unfocused, Isaac let his thoughts wander. He still dreamt about it—that day in the Hell House. His nose itched for more of that white powder. Dakarius had done his work well. Never before that moment had he felt so alive. That powder sang to him like a siren, and Isaac knew his will was weak. Weaponising his apathy was his greatest defence against the white song. If he felt nothing, he needed nothing. If he needed nothing, well, cocaine was nothing, too. 

The smell of cooking, of buttered asparagus and roasted potatoes, filtered up through the floor. Suddenly salivating, Isaac forgot the powder and stood from the bed. Then, decisively, he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Deleting Al’s message, he tossed the phone onto the bed and left it to rot. 

The kitchen was always clean these days, and the men had even taken to leaving their shoes at the front door. Sweet smells now filled the house as often as not, and Isaac caught a whiff of the outdoor grill-seared steak mingling with the upper crust of inner kitchen society. Julia was bent over the stove, a wisp of grey hair falling into her heat-reddened face. She looked the picture of domesticity. Isaac whisked over to the cupboard and set the table for three. Piece by piece, dinner came to rest in steaming plates on the table. Isaac’s mouth was positively watering by the time they all sat down. The sirloin was perfectly seared, juices dripping out with every stab of the fork, the greens were beautifully buttered, and the potatoes exploded like savoury fireworks in his mouth. It wasn’t the kind of meal he had grown up with, but it was undeniably delicious. Never had the Pit seemed so far away. 

“How was that conference, Julia?” Ronnie asked, stuffing steaming steak into his mouth.

“What conference was that?” Isaac piped in.

“Very instructive, Ronald, though I admit, some of their ideas are as pointless as progress for progress’ sake. Issac, I attended a conference in Chicago on adolescent trauma over the weekend. The keynote speaker was a psychiatrist named Anna Sikorski. She is currently the head of “The View” psychiatric hospital, which is one of the largest of its kind in America. She has specialised for the last twenty years in children and young adults with an emphasis on, of course, trauma. 

“Nearly all mental illness can be traced to childhood trauma, from the more benign ADHD to more severe cases such as Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

“What’s Dissociative Disorder?” Isaac asked.

Uncle Ronnie sallied forth excitedly, “They used to call it Multiple Personality Disorder! Like when you have a bunch of different personalities that you don’t even know about, but which come out and act totally different from each other.” He finished with a puppy-like look for affirmation, directed at Dr. Nocturn.

Nodding and beaming at him, Julia said, “That’s right! Severe mental illness, especially, is almost always a sign of childhood trauma, though one of the things Dr. Sikorski said was that the trauma is often equal to the spirit, which means something that might traumatise one person might have no effect at all—or minimal effect—on another person. Every individual has a unique trauma threshold, with emotionally resilient personalities able to withstand larger degrees of trauma without succumbing to mental illness, while more emotionally delicate individuals are prone to all kinds of difficulties.”

Isaac chewed on this for a moment, then said, “But can’t some people be born with their mental illnesses?”

“Some, no doubt, especially in cases of Autism or Down Syndrome—the latter of which is exclusively genetic—but Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder are nearly always caused by traceable traumas. Some of these trauma triggers may have occurred even at the toddler stage, though these cases are extremely rare. In my opinion, nearly all such recorded cases were misdiagnosed. What is generally considered “early onset” would be a manifestation in the latter teenage years. 

“Wait,” Isaac said, “didn’t Inessa start showing signs when she was like, twelve?”

“Not exactly,” Julia replied. “She first came into my office for behavioural issues related to socialisation difficulties, and it was not until a few years later that the Schizophrenia was first revealed. Of course, all the way up until the end, she insisted she was not ill at all, which greatly complicated our efforts at healing. As for the more extreme behaviour at the end, it was likely related to a form of Survivor’s Guilt. She believed she was responsible for poor María’s death.”

Uncle Ronnie broke in, “What d’ya think set her off so early, Julia?”

Julia shook her head slowly. “That’s very difficult to say with any degree of certainty. I have a few theories, but even after all this time…” she trailed off and stared into space for a moment, but before anyone felt that it was necessary to recall her, she shook herself and tried again. “What Dr. Sikorski was trying to emphasise was the relationship of childhood trauma to later manifestations of mental illness. Of course, that’s no big revelation to us therapists! But we usually don’t associate the more “benign” issues children encounter with significant enough trauma to trigger severe mental illness. However, one of the most difficult lessons therapists must learn is to disregard all attempts to compare different patients and their perceived levels of pain. A successful man in his thirties who struggles with ADHD is suffering and deserves all the compassionate care a therapist can offer, just as a fifteen-year-old girl who has undergone the worst abuse at the hands of a family member and who now suffers from acute Early Onset Schizophrenia ought to receive the best and most empathetic care. No two patients can ever be compared to each other because both have real pain, and that pain is valid and worthy of respect, sympathy, and care, no matter the cause or individual situation.”

Isaac broke in, “Are you saying Inessa was abused?”

Julia threw up her hands and apologised, “I’m sorry! That example was a little too close to home. I did not mean to infer any guilt on the part of anyone, least of all the deceased! Nevertheless, it’s no secret that Inessa held many things close to her chest.”

“How else can you explain it?” Uncle Ronnie asked, bluntly.

“That’s partly why I attended the lecture,” Julia responded. “The case of more seemingly benign triggers was what Dr. Sikorski based her presentation around. We all know how sensitive Inessa could be regarding the invisible phenomena she was persuaded she could see. If she felt she was really seeing things nobody else could see but was forced to deny it, this may have caused both her wariness of social interactions and a breakdown in her faith in her own sensory perception. Overall, it was a fascinating lecture, and I think I may write to Dr. Sikorski and ask for more information. It sounds like she may have had some intimate experience. At the very least, she has made herself an expert on rare psychological phenomena.

“Unfortunately, most of the other people at the conference espoused some… radical rehabilitation theories. These theories usually have dramatic—and irreversible—consequences. Naturally, they are almost never properly vetted by clinical trials.”

Uncle Ronnie sighed and shook his head, “I will never understand why people always have to latch onto everything new just because it’s new.”

“Yeah, Tio,” Isaac cut in with a laugh, “you’d rather be riding in a horse an’ buggy than in a nice, air-conditioned car!”

“Hey! Don’t knock it! You don’t have to fill a horse up with gas every week!” he retorted, poking his fork at Isaac.

”Giddy up! Yee haw, cowboy!” Isaac threw a hand to the brim of an invisible cowboy hat and stuck his other hand out to lay hold of invisible reins, miming Uncle Ronnie riding his imaginary pinto. 

Julia laughed a high, clear laugh, then gave Uncle Ronnie a significant look and said, “A lot of women find men and horses irresistible…”

“Oh, come on, people!” Isaac groaned.

A general uproar of laughter followed this comment, and Isaac felt many a care slip away. “It isn’t too bad,” he thought, “having a third person at the table.” Yet tables have four sides… “I wonder what SHE would have thought about this?”

Dinner passed, and the couple separated from what was, to them, the third wheel. Isaac sat down to watch the news while Julia and Ronnie cleaned up in the kitchen. He would have helped, but they both shooed him away so they could have some alone time. 

Isaac always found it fascinating to see people he knew appear on the screen. Jeff he had known since childhood, of course, but now the face of Melissa Haut was familiar to him. She reminded him of the interview that had never been and the life he might have lived, had he been allowed to show his face. 

While he watched and smiled at Jeff’s jokes about cloud cover and cats with glasses, Uncle Ronnie called from the kitchen, “Hey, Isaac, what’s the weather going to be like tomorrow?”

Jeff had just finished his forecast, his smile like quicksilver on the screen. Isaac shouted the man’s prognostication back to Uncle Ronnie, “Sunny and beautiful! Not a drop of rain in the sky.”

Chapter 8: Numa

The day after the fire, Magi awoke bruised, bloodied, and with a throat so raw it felt like it had been repeatedly raked by raptor talons. Eyes still a little watery, he sat up in his bed and realised he had not bothered to undress before sleeping. The angry lines of code on his computer monitors still glowered at him from where he had attempted to make something of value, whilst Dakarius sat still as death in the room, watching his every move. The code was worthless. Magi knew he would have to start entirely from scratch today. He released a suppressed sigh, but then his eye chanced to fall on the book. There it was—the ream of paper and ink for which he had paid so dearly. He wondered if Dakarius would come back into the room to watch him all day again.

Straining every orifice, Magi listened, waiting to see if he could hear Dakarius in the next room. Even though they had moved to a new house, Dakarius had positioned his bedroom to be as close to Magi’s as possible. This protective proximity did not make Magi feel much safer. He listened with all his might, but the only noises he could hear came from downstairs. 

Looking up at the Lego owl, Magi said quietly, “Do you think I should chance it?”

Magi patiently waited as though the owl were speaking. After a moment, he said, “True. I should check to see if he’s here or not. Maybe I’ll go downstairs and eat something. That way, I can make sure he’s there and see if he’s going to watch or not. It’s a good plan, but I really want to read the book a little before I have to get back to work... If he’s downstairs, I can’t read it at all. I will have to jump straight back into the code, but... If I’m really quiet, maybe he won’t know I woke up?”

Curiosity took the better place of caution. As quietly as he was able, Magi swung his feet onto the floor. Creeping to the door, he poked his head out and listened. 

A voice filtered up the stairs, “…said he’d be back inna few hours. Don’ get start’ without him. You know he’ been fierce late’, so don’ go an’…”

Magi pulled his head back into his room, crowing in delight. “Dakarius is out of the house! I’m gonna read that book for one hour. He’ll never know an’ I won’t get into trouble. Not like I can make heads or tails of that AI program he wants anyway.” Shoving aside a mound of moulding laundry, Magi sat down to read Resonance, the Magic of Wavelengths and the Radio Signal. The sound of a WKBL news broadcast filtered up from the TV downstairs.

“…Village caught fire last night, destroying a historical home built in 1892 by Alvan McCauley, a famous Scottish architect. Investigators have estimated the house to have contained a stunning ten thousand books of the owner’s private collection. They determined that all this highly flammable material was the contributing factor to the catastrophic destruction of the house and the consequent damage to the surrounding homes. It took the fire department seventeen hours to contain the inferno. It is believed that the owner of the house—a professor in the Information Technology department at Wayne State University—was killed in the blaze…”

Magi stood up and closed the door. Bowing his head, he felt the need to say something for the poor old man, but he did not know the words proper to the ritual. Looking up at the owl stapled to the ceiling, he sighed and said, “He was a good man, wasn’t he? It’s not fair. Everybody I ever liked gets hurt. Maybe I should never make friends again. Maybe if I hate everybody, they won’t get hurt.” He was quiet for a moment, then sighed and said, “Well, I saved his book at least. He would have liked that. I wish I could have saved a few more. I never saw a library like that before, an’ I never will again. Goodbye, Dr. Wunn, sorry you met me.”

A throbbing pain had settled into his chest while he spoke. Wincing at this invisible sensation, Magi clutched his chest with his hand, grimaced, and held back the tears threatening to cascade down his cheeks. It wouldn’t do to waste time in grief, but it was difficult to make the pain pass. His thoughts returned to the tome, “If Dakarius catches me reading when I’m supposed to be working, he might rip up Tesla’s book. I better be real’ careful.” 

Scanning his room, Magi chanced upon a large, outdated coding manual. Ruthlessly gouging a hole in the inside of the book, he made a space just wide enough to conceal Tesla’s last work. Then, sitting down in the little space he had made on the floor, Magi slipped the precious tome into its cover and admired his work. Anyone who walked in through the door would see only him pouring through a coding manual. He could easily close the cover, and no one would be the wiser. 

It was time to begin. Pulling up his hood, Magi concealed his face. Then he started to read. At first, he listened for the sound of footsteps more than he concentrated on the text, but after a while, the sheer brilliance and complexity of the incredible work consumed all his attention. 

Nothing he had ever read could compare to this. Sometimes, the notes in the margins would go sideways or even upside down, and he would have to turn the book around to read them. It was a laborious, numbing chore to make mathematical sense of the two simultaneously coexisting works. That the great Nikola Tesla had stumbled upon something amazing was obvious, the more Magi kept reading. Still, it became clear that Tesla himself did not understand what he was writing. The notes in the margins revealed one failed experiment after another. It was as though Tesla was groping about in the darkness, feeling something huge with his hands and trying to determine its nature and use. 

Magi’s head swam. Raising his hooded head towards the owl, he asked in a distracted tone, “If every wavelength is merely a physical apparition of a mysterious resonation that is both eternal and undetectable via any mechanical instrumentation, then where does the resonance go when the wavelength dissipates? How is the whole universe not completely jammed so full of resonance that nothing else remains? Unless the wavelength itself is eternal? Do they go into the vacuum of space to fly away into eternity? What does he mean when he says that the universe speaks through resonation?”

Staring at the owl with glassy eyes, Magi remained quiet, thinking. The owl always helped him focus his thoughts. There were so many competing theories in his mind that he could barely manage half of them. A light flicked on in his glimmering green eye, and he threw his neck back to face the hidden book.

“Of course! Quantum particles communicate instantly, no matter the distance, but without the proper starting position, it is impossible to know which particle will resonate with which…” 

This cycle repeated itself over and over. Magi would read, get stumped, ask the poor mute owl for help, then dive back in again. He soon discovered that the book could not be understood if he did not use it like a conversation. Resonance itself could neither be understood nor used in isolation. It was a communal power at its very essence, and Magi wondered if that was why Tesla had ultimately failed to realise what he himself had discovered—he had had no one to talk to. Tesla had no peers, but Magi now had Tesla. It was as though the mad Serb was in the margins explaining, obsessing over the numbers 3, 6, and 9, complaining about corporate greed, and ultimately unravelling the mysteries of the universe with the first person in a hundred years who could understand him. 

Magi was enthralled. He forgot about his scorched throat, his rumbling stomach, or even the imminent return of his “father.” Something impossible was happening in that book, and in his mind. All good books take on a life of their own, it is true, and all readers may slip away from their own little lives to join hands with the life of the book. Thus, the reader is swept away, sometimes to faraway lands, sometimes to the highest mountains of life, and sometimes to the darkest of passions. But this book was not like that. This book was itself alive, thrumming, pulsating with life. Magi could hear the book’s heartbeat and knew it like a friend. The worst parts were the missing pages, for they were like trauma that hides and destroys parts of a person’s personality. 

Again and again, Magi lifted his cowled head and spoke to his little owl, hoping for clarity and asking for help, and the owl encouraged him every time. Whenever Magi was stumped, he would talk to the owl as though it were a third person in the room, and together, they would all three puzzle through a problem: Magi, the owl, and Nikola Tesla. Of course, Magi reminded himself from time to time that the owl was nothing more than a hundred pieces of plastic clicked together into a recognisable shape, but the book made him wonder if those pieces separated would still be the same. If they were all taken together in a bag and shaken up, would they still be his precious little owl? If not a piece was missing, would it still be the same? Each brick was its own unique substance. Separately, they still existed, but they were not the owl. Only when combined into a form did they suddenly become a whole being. Their individual lives disappeared (but were not annihilated!) into the greater whole, a whole that could not exist without the individual, but which was greater than a hundred individuals. That greater whole had a resonating spirit capable of being known and interacted with as a complete being, while the individuals could not be complete without the shape they were meant to participate in. By that participation, the individual piece could take up a refrain greater by far than anything it could hope to sing on its own. The owl had taught him many things, he thought, but this was its greatest achievement: that a being’s life could only be complete when in perfect participation with the social body of other beings. 

Unbeknownst to him, the entire day had passed in this existential elevation while he sat musing and mesmerised. Nineteen blessed, uninterrupted hours disappeared without his notice. The book was finished before he even knew it. His legs had fallen asleep so many times he could hardly feel them anymore, but the book was done. As though he had been standing beside Tesla as he scribbled in the margins, Magi had mentally performed the calculations and experiments with him, working through the errors. As he did so, he slowly understood why the author had chosen to use such a precocious word as “magic” in the title. Resonance was cool. 

A firm, insistent growl sounded from his midsection, and Magi suddenly realised he was starving. Just as he was about to stand up and see what kind of food might be floating about downstairs, the door flew open with a crash. Terror seized him, but he had just enough presence of mind to slam the coding book shut, falling backwards into a pile of clothes. Framed by the open door was exactly the shape he had imagined in his most delirious nightmares. Black as the void itself, huge, heaving with anger and exertion, stood Dakarius. Only his eyes were visible against the rest of his silhouetted body. They were streaked with red, almost like he had been partaking of Phat’s special stash. The spiked wristband gleamed as he twisted his hand into a fist. Unconsciously, Magi scrabbled away from him towards the bed. Glancing over at his monitor, he realised the timer which shut down the computer into sleep mode had betrayed his inactivity. Dakarius noticed, too. 

One slow, menacing step followed another as Dakarius stalked towards him—stalked as a panther stalks a cornered pig. With every horrible footfall, his grim mouth spat the words to a question. A question to which he knew the answer already.

“Afta all dat happen’ yestiday, is you still playin’ games? All I asked fo’ is you t’get serious. T’final’ get t’work, an’ you read instead? Give it t’me.”

Mute and trembling from head to toe, Magi handed him the book, not even conscious of whether or not it properly concealed Tesla’s tome. With a vast, taloned hand, Dakarius took the book and stared at it. The thick coding manual was heavy enough to cause the muscles on his arm to bulge slightly, and Magi found himself staring at the inky sinews and imagining that they had taken on a life of their own. Then, with a snarl and a curse, Dakarius threw the book onto the bed. How could he be angry at Magi for studying a coding manual? He had not detected the deception. 

Furious at being thwarted, for he knew he had been tricked—though he did not know how exactly—Dakarius looked around the room angrily, his fists clenching and unclenching like he wanted something to hurt. Then, his evil eye settled on the dangling owl. With a look of maniacal glee, he snatched it from the ceiling. Startled, Magi gasped and cried out in dismay. The owl represented one of the only nice things Dakarius had ever done for him. With furious glee, Dakarius crushed it in his hands. Several pieces fell out between his fingers, and Magi cried louder, this time on his knees.

“Please! Don’t break it!”

It was to no avail. The owl shattered like glass. Holding the ruin up like a sign, Dakarius said, “Look what you made me do, Magi. Look.”

He looked. The owl was destroyed, shattered like all his hopes and dreams. He looked, for he could not look away.

Then the implacable tyrant ground out this warning, “One month. Only one. If d’Terminator program ain’t builded, an’ I ain’t inside every security camera in Michigan in one month, I gon’ do exact’ d’same t’you.” Twisting the Legos like he was grinding them into dust, he put his massive fists in front of Magi’s face, then he took the pieces with him, and Magi knew he would never see them again. 

An insane urge to run up behind the man and tackle him filled Magi till he was shaking with the rage of two decades of abuse. Tears flowed unabated in his mismatched eyes. Silently shaking, he threw his fists against the floor, smashing them again and again till he had no energy left. His throat closed. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see. Red filled every inch of his vision. 

Suddenly, he was up. Running. He never saw the crew stare at him as he flew down invisible stairs. He never saw the food that had so entranced him a few minutes ago. He did not even see the front door as he fled into the night. How long, or how far he ran into the moonlight, he never knew. Then, slowly, the burst of raw energy faded, and he slowed to a walk. The tears no longer fell. His chest hurt, but it no longer heaved with torturous agony. 

The broken city had been transformed. White light bathed old houses in a curious glow and illuminated the shadows of the trees and undergrowth that had sprung up everywhere across the Desolation of Detroit. At this hour, man was quiet, but the world was awake. Scratchings, snufflings, and slitherings in the undergrowth along the roads held no fear for him now. If a pack of wild dogs had come out of the trees in that moment, he would have welcomed their teeth in his throat. 

On and on he walked, and the world he had left grew fainter and further away. Once more, he began to smell the earth; the breeze tangled pollen and scent into his nostrils, the wind shook the leaves and bent the grass, and the sound was sweet in his ear. He found himself in a section of the neighbourhood where not a single house remained. Nothing was left but empty lots rapidly transforming themselves back into forestland. It was a young wood, angry and wounded, growing under the shadow of a merciless lord.  

The fluttering of some animal shook a small bush some twenty feet away. Magi waited to see the cat emerge with its prey, but the fluttering only continued. No hissing or barking came either. Deadened by agony, Magi could feel no fear, nothing but a sort of dull curiosity. He slowed to a stop, waiting for something to happen. 

The bush shook slightly. A few leaves fell to the earth, and the fluttering suddenly stopped. Magi waited a moment, then turned to go, to continue his crawl across the moonlit desert, when he suddenly stopped. For reasons he could never have explained, he turned again to the bush. All was silent. Then his feet were moving. In a moment, he had reached it. Taking both hands, he pulled the mangy shrub apart and saw a small lump by its roots. Squinting, Magi could not quite make out what it was. Bending down, he regretted leaving his flashlight at home. He wondered briefly how helpful it might be if he had one built into his phone as he pressed his face close to the lump. Then he saw it for what it was. 

In a small pool of coagulated blood, the ruins of a bird lay amongst the leaves and roots. It was a rounded thing, less than a foot long. One wing was horribly twisted, hanging on by a thread, and one of its legs was missing. It fluttered and made a little hoot. Suddenly, he realised what it was: a dying owl.

He froze in shock. The bird’s face was also damaged; the eye that faced him was nothing but a smashed hole. It could not see him, he realised, but it could hear him. “It probably thinks I’m going to finish it off!” The thought made him sick. It was about to die, its life leeching away a little more with every lurching flutter of its wings.

Magi rebelled. All his life, he had been forced to leave everything he had ever loved, always to do the will of his dark master. He had never been allowed pets. He had never been allowed friends. But there, all alone, in the darkness and moonlight, Magi rebelled against his past, against his fears, against logic itself. He knew nothing could save such a ruined creature. There were no hospitals for owls. If a man were in such a terrible plight, such a state of ruination, even the best hospitals in the world would struggle to save him. He knew he had no medical expertise. He knew nothing of the treatment of small furry or feathery things, but in that moment, none of those details mattered.  

With a gentle motion, Magi scooped the bird up under his hands, cooing and whispering to it. The bird gave one last flutter, then went still. Pulling the ruined little thing to his chest, wincing at the way the broken and nearly severed wing twisted away from its body, Magi held it close. Even if it died, he would not let it die alone and far from home. He would be a friend to the friendless, a hand to hold in the gathering dark. 

Suddenly, he was running again, but this time back towards the Hell he had fled. He could barely see where he was going. His eyes were blind with tears. His feet slapped against the pavement, the white trees bowed to the comforter as he passed, and two heartbeats ran as one. Clutched to his breast, the bird made no attempt to flee, passing its fear into the void. 

The miles disappeared. The house was before them. Magi knew he could not bring the owl inside. Slinking over the fence, somehow protecting the bird as he did so, Magi looked about wildly. He had no plan. All his thoughts dwelt on the safety and comfort of the bird. The backyard was treacherous in the night. Jagged metal, porcelain, and splintering wood rose like knives to cut and tear at passersby. The black maw of the shed seemed even more horrible and terrifying in the night, as not a shaft of moonlight pierced that place. 

Crouching down in the flattest section of the yard he could find, Magi pulled the little owl away so he could look at it. The owl’s good eye was turned up to him now, and he could see his reflection in that unblinking orb. What he saw saddened him. Then he heard a noise—a human noise. Adrenaline filled him with shuddering power. He leapt to his feet, desperate to escape notice. Spinning about, he saw that though the yard was full of trash, there was nowhere to hide. In a burst of madness, he flung himself to the gaping maw of the shed. 

Blackness overtook them, but not before he heard someone say, “I think Dakarius’ moron kid finally have a breakdown. You see him runnin’? He ain’t never comin’ back, an’ Dakarius gon’ chase him down an’ pop a cap in his freakshow eyes.” Another voice laughed in confirmation, but as he burrowed deeper into the shed, these voices shrank away until they disappeared entirely. 

The blackness was complete. Magi could see nothing, but the smell inside was overpowering. Musty, rotting wood, and strangely, the scent of a dripping mineral deposit—like a cave—filled his nostrils. Shrinking away deeper and deeper from the opening, Magi felt for the sides of the shed and suddenly pulled his hand back. It was covered in spider webs, and his hand was encased in them! He did not know what kind of spider made such a thick, all-encompassing web, but he did not want to meet it, especially not in pitch blackness. Then he looked down and saw the bird’s eye shining in the dark. 

He knew owls were nocturnal, which meant they could see in the dark, but he had not known their eyes could glow. This owl, however, did more than glow—it positively radiated light. Magi could see the bird’s ruined face from the light of its single eye. It gave no more flutters but swivelled its head around and looked into the dark. Then it turned its eye back on Magi, and he saw with certainty that the light within was slowly fading. 

A strange feeling came over him in that dark place. It was a feeling he had never known before. It was warm, like the blossoming of the sun in his stomach. Danger awaited him at every turn, but that dying light in the black cave twisted off the spigot of fear. He would not be afraid anymore. 

Resonance.

Pulling up his shirt, he tucked the owl under it as carefully and gently as he could, wincing at every painful-looking movement. Then he stepped out into the moonlight, transformed. Confidently, he walked towards the back door. It was still unlocked. Opening it, he slipped inside, his hooded head held high. Then he was in his room. He closed and barred the door behind him. Dakarius could break it down if he wanted to; that was no concern of his. Snatching up a towel, Magi spread it across his workstation. Then, as carefully as if he held the Hope Diamond, he placed the broken bird on it. 

Under the electric light, the bird was in far worse condition than he had previously suspected. In addition to all its other injuries, a horrible gash appeared on its side, and… things… were leaking out that made the blood seem trivial. Setting his teeth, Magi closed his eyes and opened his ears. 

There. 

He could hear it. Thud-thud-thud, the tiny, fading heartbeat. But there was something more. Yes, a resonating wavelength, a unique signature, an irreproducible code. The bird’s life sign. It was unbelievably complex, but Magi knew he could read it. Tearing into a crate of supplies against the wall, he began to lay out tools.

Snatching up a half-disassembled RC helicopter, he tore into the machine with grim, maniacal enthusiasm. He had been experimenting with adding tiny WIFI cameras to the front of the flying machine, but that work would have to wait. Pulling out the camera, he set it aside. Then he popped off the propeller blades and threw them aside also. Carefully, he snipped the back rotary arm off without cutting the wires leading to it and gingerly lifted the owl’s torn wing. Then, taking his plastic welder and a needle, he got to work. 

With a jerk, he ripped one of his computers from the wall. In a moment, he had it disassembled. Ripping the motherboard out, he cannibalised the fine golden filaments inside as well as several other valuable components. A six-thousand-dollar, custom-made PC tower was shredded in a few minutes, and some of its golden filaments were carefully inserted into the owl. Taking up a pair of jeweller’s glasses, Magi squinted and studied the inside of the bird mechanically, but he listened with another organ entirely. Ripping apart an experiment with solar technology he had begun last year, before everything had gone to hell, he pulled apart the expensive equipment as though it had cost him nothing. It had been meant as a revolution in solar power technology, a delicate gold mesh 100x more efficient than anything else on the market, but he had never quite completed the project. Now, he sliced through the mesh with impunity and wove the golden filaments into it to make a fibrous sheath. 

Firmly squashing the fear that threatened to overcome his senses, Magi pulled the slopping organs out of the bird—and replaced them with this mesh. Taking the titanium spindles and tiny motors he had pulled from the RC helicopter, he reinforced the bird’s skeleton with them. Then, he inserted three tiny batteries in a series connected with golden filament to the mesh and the motors, creating a powered exoskeleton. Still, the gaping wound in the poor bird’s side would have to wait. Snatching up the camera, Magi cut away the goop that remained of the owl’s destroyed eye and carefully inserted the camera into the owl’s skull. Taking some golden filament, he attached the camera to the mesh, creating an internal ecosystem. 

It was time to work on the wing. Taking a gyroscope, Magi broke the casing and sewed it into the bird’s armpit. Stripping the feathers from the bird’s hollow bone, he inserted a titanium peg into each side of the break and superglued the seam. To replace the snapped tendons, he inserted three micro-motors, changing the gearing to match the needs of the wing, and inserted ball joints for flexibility. 

Throwing himself at his remaining computer, Magi worked like a madman. Lines of code flew from his fingers like lightning, creating programs that themselves created programs, multiplying like magic as he integrated a new framework into his burgeoning AI system. Millions of lines populated the screen in only minutes, but code without computer is nothing. Snatching up his custom-built laptop, he ripped its cover off and removed a circuit board no bigger than his thumbnail. Still, the board seemed huge when he held it up to the bird. He hesitated, but there were no other alternatives. Removing the processor, he wired it with the board and slipped it into the cavity in the bird’s chest. The control module was the trickiest bit, as it was entirely self-contained and had to be fitted perfectly. One by one, tiny electric motors were installed in various places, and slowly, the finished product took shape. That he could finally sew the gaping wound in the bird’s side up came as little relief because the worst was yet to come.

Spinning the towel 180 degrees, Magi oriented the bird’s head to face him. Then, with a fresh razorblade designed for hobby work, he made an incision. The science was done. It was time for something new, something ancient, something altogether inexplicable. Guided by that mysterious creative impulse hidden by the rational faculties that the ancients once titled The Muse, Magi used his newfound faculty… and listened. The bird told him what to do. Not with any movement, not with any speech, but the very members of that ruined creature cried out with their silent voices, telling anyone who would listen what was wrong. The tendons cried out, the blood vessels sang of pain and rupture, and the bones rattled out the terms of their demise in dusty drumbeats, but it was the brain that chanted in code. Magi had learned to listen, to know what holes to plug, what tears to mend, but the mind ever has its own ideas. 

He must connect that feverish, fleeting mind to flesh, blood, metal, and silicone. The bird was almost gone, and he knew he must cut its thread a little more. With a delicacy the most precise machines in the world could hardly boast, Magi sliced into the soft head. If the bird moved a millimetre, the blade would take out half its brain. 

A death-like stillness filled the room. Magi dared not breathe. But the owl lay still upon the table. The animal trusted the man, even as the man cut into its skull. The bond only an animal can have with man was formed in that moment. True, the animal mind still screamed injustice, crying of the unnatural, of the alien, but the animal soul remained still, and that soul of trust and submission saved it. 

Two nano-scale radio antenna arrays powerful enough to pick up all bands were directly inserted into its brain cavity, and the finest golden filaments he had were placed just so into certain sections of the brain. These filaments were wired to the rest of the mechanical apparatus in place of biological nerves. This last addition was the hardest. It was brain surgery at its most complex, and it wasn’t like he was exactly an expert in Strigidae brain structures! He realised that if he stopped to think about what he was doing, panic would set in, his hands would start to shake, and everything would fail. He must become the void. There was no room for fear or emotion of any kind. There was only the work at hand. Almost before he knew what was happening, the owl’s body was sewn back together. 

It was then that he noticed it. Little wisps of spiderwebs were woven into every hole. He had forgotten to clean his hands before he began his mad work! It was too late now to do anything about these threads that were a hundredth the size of the finest filaments he had used. He tried to brush them away from the hole in the bird’s side, but the spider web’s sticky sides clung fast. With a start, he realised they were helping to hold the tiny cuts together! Magi had had nothing to use for proper stitches and had not even glanced at the material he had used. He had accidentally sewn it up with spider silk! Dumbfounded by this revelation, Magi stared at the owl’s chest, trying to imagine how this organic compound might affect any recovery the owl might make. As he stared, the bird’s chest heaved up, then shuddered down, and he feared the worst. But then it rose slightly and fell. Once more... 

The owl was still breathing... for now.

Wringing his hands, Magi backed away from the desk, not knowing what else to do. Just then, he had a terrible realisation. He had forgotten the feet! 

There could be no substitute. The razor that had sliced so steadily into its brain must be bent to one final task. Cutting away the flesh and feathers around the stump of its leg, Magi attached another titanium peg, tiny hydraulic motors, and a marvellous contraption of flexible cable that was attached to tendons and ligaments. Then he fit the last of the gold filaments to its nerve endings so that the motors could activate with a thought. Owls have zygodactyl feet, which means that their first two toes face forward (these he made of surgical steel and cabling), and the back two can rotate (these he made of hollow titanium shafts connected to an ingenious array of ball joints, cabling, and miniature hydraulics). Breaking the razor blade in half, Magi ceremoniously inserted one piece into each titanium sheath. The owl now had the sharpest talons in all of nature. 

It was done. Really done this time. The owl had lost so much blood and undergone such trauma that no physical laws could have kept it alive. In fact, it ought to have expired hours prior. Yet, there is an invisible law, too, and this law of love knits sinews together, clots blood, and cleaves together wounds that ought to have exterminated life. Magi had no way of replacing the lost blood or repairing ruptured organs, but he had loved the little thing, and for its part, it had believed in that salvific love, and that belief—against all odds—had saved it. While Magi had been listening to its resonance, the owl had also been listening. In his beating heart, the owl had heard something he had never known, a power that transforms the universe and bends the very laws of physics, and he had decided to trust in that power. 

Magi stepped back, exhausted, burnt out, hungry, and, most of all, crying out with his soul a wordless prayer for the salvation of one tiny, helpless creature of the night, for whom nobody had ever cared, and for whom he would have gladly traded his life. Magi had no way of knowing if his work had been in vain or if the sacrifice of a decade’s worth of projects for one moment of mad energy had been worth it. The bird lay so still on the bench. 

Then its wing gave a little flutter—the damaged wing—and Magi cried for joy. The filaments in the brain were working! Standing over it like a father over his child, he wrung his hands together, drinking in the sight of it. Though all owls have large eyes, this one seemed half eyeballs, staring back up at him. Now those eyes were mismatched—just like his. 

Magi had no memory of what happened over the next 24 hours. Somehow, he slept, fed it mashed-up worms and sugar water, and managed to scarf down a bite of food somewhere in there himself, but those hours were a blur. Now that the frenzy had faded, the triage concluded; all that remained was a dizzying exhaustion. Yet every time Magi looked at the bird struggling to flap its wings, to take a little drink, or to nibble on some food, he felt a sense of pride he had not known possible. When the owl finally managed to stand upright, his one leg clanking slightly against the other metal objects on the table, he had nearly jumped for joy. With its cybernetics showing on the outside of its body, the owl would never fit in with its old parliament—if it ever had—but it lived. If Magi was perfectly quiet, he could hear the whirr of electronics, and every time the owl attempted to walk, it made a clicking or clanging sound as the mechanical talon attempted to grip things as it shuffled along. It was still desperately weak, but Magi would do whatever it took to nurse it back to health.