Xan's Journal
Dingman's Ferry, Pennsylvania - August 12th 2007
Third person tonight. Vellum-inspired.
The drive up is an easy one, easy because she's rereading what she already read. A deal is a deal.
The prize and payment? The chance to go insane. Xan's a thrillseeker. Tell her she's on the road to ruin, and she'll keep on trucking.
So there she is, hair wet and wild, off of her face and out of her eyes, earphones wailing, black Labrador whining at her side. He places his paw in the middle of a paragraph, like he knows, he knows, you know?
But Xan's a road warrior, in a dress and rouge. Corked zinfandel, yet to be drunk, a blush.
Twenty-four hours. Thirty-six? How long to digest this? To wrap her mind around it? She's a reader, real and true. She wants every word of it.
It's Cap May, Nineteen-ninety-something, and Xan's a budding teenager, obsessed with that claw-grabber-game, fishing out toys like she's a new age Ahab. The game room screens flicker a warning, side by side: "Lost boy. Mark Joseph Himebaugh."
But Xan's shooting 'em up somewhere, out there, in VR before there was an affordable 'net to escape to.
Hours later, she's walking on the wharf, on the Boardwalk. Lights twirl counterclockwise, ahead of screams and a great rush of air. Faces blurred by high-velocity roar past, and Xan hurries for the next thrill. She wants the swings. She wants the spinning swings.
Closest thing to flying, that.
There's a shop in greater Cape May, a few from Wildwood Crest, and it's a Native American New Age melting pot. Xan fingers a white stone with an imprint of a deer in black. Antlers. Male deer, reindeer, or caribou.
She doesn't know why she likes it, but she does. Innocence, it claims. Xan laughs and laughs.
It's Two-thousand-seven, and Xan's not a kid anymore, but she still looks it, especially in her sack-cloth-gone-country attire, like she's Marie Antoinette trying to revert to some simpler time, or something. And she's taking a break from the absurdity, because she's hand-in-hand with Phreedom and Anna and Jack and Freedom Jack and don't ask her Jack because all she wants to do is ride her bike.
It's mid-afternoon, and she's woken up with a start, the paperback on her stomach. Stretching, then still, she stalks out, flipflops keeping a slow themesong of flip-flap-clop. She's on her bike in no time, tearing up the gravel, sending rocks for her shadow to catch.
Up the hill and over, down and over again, she's wary of the cars but knows it's not as bad as Brooklyn, not ever, because here they're all slow and nice and soft, and they wave at you even if you've never ever seen them before in your life.
It's Pennsylvania, somewheresville, summer.
Up and down and up again, 'til she feels it in her thighs. Her skin is as brown as it ever will be, and it's her Gypsy mother's fault and fortune that she'll never burn. Her white skin toasted, like some unnatural nymph, with flaming hair and seafoam eyes. She belongs here, in the wilderness, with the bugs that lie flat before they fly.
But something lures her to the edge, and it's not the promise of the Vellum, no, and right now she's not looking through Guy's eyes at all, the sometime-narrator, not even worthy of a real name. (Guy. What kind of fucking name is Guy? It's like saying "Hey-you-so-and-so." And her mother tells her its French, and it's pronounced Ghee.)
So, ok, here's Xan on the edge of the world which is somewheresville Pennsylvania, long-lost-daughter to her Atlantic coast, and missing the spray of saltwater 'til every part of her shakes. Her throat is parched. Beads of sweat freckle her forehead. Her hair is curling under a noonday sun.
But there they are, a trio of them. The Doe does not move, does not blink, does not continue to chew at the clover in its mouth. Her children back away, and one is cautious enough to hide behind a tree, but the Doe does not move. Xan on her bike, frozen, with doe-eyes. The Doe in the thicket, not six feet away, with girl-eyes. The two regard each other as the fauns quiver in the tall grass. Xan's not a city slicker and she's no danger to you. The Doe is still, save for the flapping of its bushy white tail.
Totem Animals
Deer blend very well with their environment but are very sensitive to every sound or movement. Often twins, even triplets, are born in the spring. Does and bucks live in separate groups until the mating season. The white-tailed deer are moderately gregarious, and family members forage food together along with other family groups, giving the appearance of a large herd. People with Deer Medicine are often described as being swift and alert. They are intuitive, often appearing to have well developed, even extrasensory perceptions. Sometimes their thoughts seem to race ahead, and they appear not to be listening. Deer's medicine includes gentleness in word, thought and touch, ability to listen, grace and appreciation for the beauty of balance, understanding of what's necessary for survival, power of gratitude and giving, ability to sacrifice for the higher good, connection to the woodland spirits, alternative paths to a goal. The gentleness of Deer is the heart-space of the Great Spirit which embodies His love for us all. Deer teaches us to find the gentleness of spirit that heals all wounds, to stop pushing to get others to change and to love and accept them as they are. The only true balance to power is love and compassion.
They gaze a while longer, still and silent, until Xan slips off her bike and kicks down the kick-stand. Still, the Doe does nothing. Doe, a deer, a female deer...
Xan, a drop of Golden Son.
You've got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl
She's a bold thing, and curious, so curious and so close, close enough to pick a clover from the very same thicket, and hold it in her very pink mouth.
Still, the Doe stares. The fauns await a cue from their mother.
"I'm not going to hurt you," says Xan to the little family.
"I'll never hurt you," says Xan to Mr. Gray, in her secret voice, on the astral plane.
"It's ok, I'm ok. Who are you? Where do you live? Are you from the Vellum? Did I write you there?" She's Guy writing a green haired Puck, and Puck is the lot of them, a fairy boy in animal totem.
For a second, Reality flickers and folds, and a Honda Civic comes tearing up the road. Xan falters, clutching the handlebars of her bike, and the deer take off, a defensive triangle through the treeline.
"Focus, baby, focus." And she's on her bike again, because that's what you do when you fall off, that's what you do when you go a little bit of The Crazy. Get back on. Focus, focus.
She's tearing down, and the tar opens for her like a celebrity starlet's red carpet, and she basks in the glow and the heat of the day, on her feet on the pedals, a standing road warrior, tempted to do those tricks of bygone years. Wheelie up, rookie.
But something forces her to stop again, and there they are, the trio, the mother, the daughter, and the spotted son. She waves at them, blows kisses, and becomes a blur as the basketball players come into view, their catcalls announcing the arrival of a civilization gone awry.
Somewheresville, Pennsylvania. What did she expect?
She's by the pool now, and it's sometime-afternoon, and the water is much too cold. Give fire to a flame child. Xan shivers and retreats, pressed between pages instead of a makeshift pond.
She's the Apple-Gold Guy guiding Puck-Pan through the World of Worlds with a celestial GPS. She's taking up technology, reconfiguring bits and pieces, and abandoning them all the same. She's Freedom Jack watching Pan-Puck-Tom die over and over. She's Samael skipping through decades of war. And then she's Thomas, through and true, painting a desert purple simply because she likes the color.
It's why he asked her that, maybe. Maybe because he knew she'd like him the best, in the end.
But she doesn't want to be Tragedy Tom forever and ever, and she doesn't want to be the roaming raped Anesthesia, but she is. And then she's Anna's Don, because Tom and Don might as well be one in the same. Little boys marry their mothers. Little girls marry their brothers.
She's in the Lava World, then she's running through the wasteland. She's one of Anna's displaced girls, gone and killed her betrothed in the marriage bed. She savors the look of surprise on his face, just before the blood loss is too much to bear. She carries the memory of his crumpled husk, blue in bed, as she moves through the plane in bloodied ballet shoes.
She holds the ones that cry. She's the one that convinced the Princess to help.
And then she's Guy again, Nazi Guy, Doctor Guy, marveling at the scripted skins, marveling at the psychopathic Jack Flash in the padded room. (Was it padded? She asks Guy and Guy says he can't remember but he hopes it was.)
She's at the dig in the twenties. She's Jack sneering at Joey in the face. Don't talk, don't talk. She's Jack contact saying burn it BURN IT BURN IT BURN IT.
The war rages on, before Xan is ever born.
She's Jack. She's bloody Jack and she's in love with him, with herself, Narcissus wakes. Everyone's in love with Jack.
The narrator changes, and Xan with him, changes faces, voices, sexes. Xan is all of them, at times, even Metatron. Why is the black man painted the bad guy? Xan muses. Xan is so New York.
Then she's Io walking with Prometheus, because she's not like other people. She wants to tear away at his chains, and shoot the Eagles, but Io doesn't do any of these things.
She likes being Jack alot more.
And through and through the Vellum, she finds other voices. How the narrator references Peter Pan after she dreams of it, and his little hail to Gaiman with a chant of the Seven Endless (and then some, and Xan wonders, how many d words can you list?). But the Nazis are all over, and if you want to reference evil in the modern world, you gotta go Nazi.
Xan sometimes wants to beat the shit out of Guy, but he doesn't know anything, because he's paperthin, like Carter and Pechorin are when Metatron grabs a hold of them.
Oh, and also, Gabriel's symbol is water, and not fire, and why is Jack Gabriel? Fire and Ice. It makes her think of "Black Dahlia."
So so so many other voices. Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came. Stephen King has a hand in this, or a shoulder, and before him, Robert Browning.
BURN IT BURN IT BURN IT...
Xan doesn't want to get dramatic, not even when she's breaking for strawberries and champagne. Drunk and in the sheltered patio, shielded by netting, by height, by trees, she watches headlights through the forest from the little road across the way. All around her, a symphony of country sounds: crickets and cicadas and the babbling brook. It's a real fucking chorus.
She starts to miss the sirens.
She's a siren and she's up the stairs with the absurdity in tow, stomach down and reading with her legs in the air. Something black blurs at the corner of her eye. Definite movement. Remember, she's sensitive to such. She blinks a moment and convinces herself it isn't there. It's not. Not even when Guy says they are there, says he almost touched one of them...
So he writes other people into the Vellum. Perhaps he has written her in. Perhaps she has always been there.
And she's marching behind Anna and Don, clutching hands with some fifty girls with the wolves at their heels and she isn't afraid.
And she's swinging her legs in bed, reading, and falling asleep. It's near two in the morning and her nose is in the neck (for if its the spine on the outside, its the neck on the inside). She doesn't remember falling asleep, but she wakes with a sensation.
A pressure on her head, and then, a breeze. Just a huff of air, just enough to tear a few dry hairs from her sopping wet head and raise them to a curl. Xan shoots up, with a sheerfire nah in her look, even though the door is closed, the windows shut, and the air conditioner turned to Off.
Nah, she says, and she keeps on reading. Even though it did feel like someone placed his hand on her sleeping head. Even though it did feel like someone breathed her in.. wrote her in..
She's not buying it until the road opens up on the way home, until the train crosses through a dimensional shift on the way to work the next day.
And all across the universes, and all across the times, Xans everywhere laugh in unison, but none of them are angels because all of them are witches.
She's waiting on Evenfall when the stock ticker ticks its last, when the suits around her throw up their hands in fury and frustration. But Xan will know better, because Xan's always been a between-creature, and Xan will know what to do.
"By Golly Mr. Gray, I've gone sane."
Twenty-four or thirty-six, she can't recall how long, but that's the most that it took. Maybe she wasn't supposed to breathe, wasn't supposed to eat or sleep or stalk the deer in the interim. But he didn't tell her that, and she really did read it all at once. It was her whole world in a day, her whole world in a dream.
Maybe it didn't work because Xan was never exactly a sane person to begin with. After all, does this look like the work of a sane person?
Xan doesn't think so.
And she laughs.
Xan's the angel that tortures the devil, then turncoats and runs away.
She probably would've ran away with him if it wasn't for the meathook in his chest.
Xan's the bitmites scrolling over a hundred million souls in their sleep. She's a thousand tiny creatures and she's all at once crying for the rebel hero.
Her mother places a glass of champagne on the coffee table of the screened-in porch of somewheresville, Pennsylvania, and asks her if she really loves her boyfriend, because she knows of all the awful terrible things that went on.
Well, not really all of it. Parents never know.
Xan thinks a moment, and says yes.
"But can you breathe without him?"
And Xan says yes.
I love him because I don't need him anymore.
