Page 162 of Dead Beat

I should go, but when he asks if I will come again, I promise that I will.

I take the shape of a cat this time that I might pad upon the floor, lick the water from the walls with my rough tongue, slip between the books and underfoot.

The knot he has prepared is glorious. I have never seen such fiery trails of complication. I am lost in it when the box closes over me.

I scream and thrash.

“Be still, spirit. I mean you no harm.”

I have never heard a lie and yet I recognize it.

I will give him what he wishes and when he has all he wants he will set me free.

I make him rich and wise and beloved. I help him win a wife of smooth skin and copper hair. I help him raise an island from the sea. I build for him a castle unlike any the world has seen.

Each time, he tells me, “Thank you, spirit. Tomorrow you will return to your realm.”

But each night he dreams and in their dreams men discover all the things they do not have. Spindles, poisons, trebuchets, jewels, farmland, a feasting hall so tall the clouds gather in its vaulted ceiling, a thousand sons, a thousand wives to please them, wings to fly with, unsinkable ships, indecipherable codes. There is no end to their longing.

His pleasure tastes like ash to me now. I grow weak and thin in the box he has built. I miss my home, my nurse. All I have is the knot. It is my only comfort, and in its whorls I lose myself for hours, until he comes with more demands.

“Spirit, what ails you?”

“What ails us all?” I’ve grown philosophical in my despair. “When will you let me go?”

“Soon,” he says. “When I know all I need to know.”

He leaves me alone a long time and when he returns he is haggard. His beard is wet with tears. “My wife has died,” he says.

“Do you wish for me to make you a new one?”

He strikes me.

“It is her I long for and no one else! Foul thing, that you could think a soul could be replaced so easily.”

His sorrow seeps across the floor to me. I touch my tongue to it, and for the first time in years I know pleasure, fullness, possibility. If his happiness was water, then this is sweet liqueur, a meadow in my mouth.

“Forgive me, master,” I mewl, well knowing he hates it when I whimper and cringe.

Again he strikes me and again, never noticing that he has trampled my precious knot. I am sad to see it go, but I know it must be so.

“Can you not bring her back to me?” he pleads.

“Impossible,” I say. But then I think, Why not?

I make for him a perfect girl, shining young and bright with eyes full of kindness, his beloved returned, soft-limbed and warmhearted.

He shouts for joy and tries to embrace her. When his arms would fasten tight around her, I crush her into nothing. Dust she is in his arms and how he wails. He falls to the floor and weeps.

Again I bring her forth, winsome and loving. She places her hand upon his back and tells him to rise, then vanishes when he reaches for her. Dust again! We play this game all night and I feast upon his aching. I miss my knot and all its paths, but now I can think clearly. I can think, and breathe, and I am so very hungry.

The next night when he reaches for her, she lets him take her in his arms. Then she laughs.

“Worm, thickwit. You’re no better than a wobbly, watery shit.”

“You do not mean it,” he moans.

“I do. Each night I prayed for death that would spare me your touch and even worse your conversation.”