Coal to Diamonds Read online

  OVER the next several weeks, Cole watched as Thorn appeared to melt. First the flesh at the corners of his mouth sagged, and soon after that his lower eyelids grew as thin and wrinkled as crepe paper. They hung down from his black irises, revealing the veiny, pink crescents below yellowing orbs. The once-firm muscles of his chest drooped like empty bags, until his nipples pointed downward. His stomach, while no fatter than it had ever been, swayed above his groin, resembling a girl’s dress folded in half to carry apples. All of his skin seemed intent upon creeping toward his toes, dragged down. Everything that had been sharp grew rounded and dulled, like jagged rocks eroded over millennia by wind and rain.

  Near the end of a particularly cool and damp April, Cole knew it would be only a half a moon at most before Thorn would die, liquefied in his bed. The awareness evoked no more joy or sadness in Cole than the realization that summer must follow spring. He’d almost hoped it would hurt more, leave a scar that might spark remembrance. Had he grown so steely hard, tempered by the flame of his power, that his surface could no longer be scratched? The possibility intrigued him, and he considered it as he lifted Thorn from the kitchen table and his untouched porridge.

  As he’d done for many days, Cole helped his tutor to the chair in the parlor and opened the curtains to provide a view of the street, now verdant and sparkling with droplets from the last storm. Cole hadn’t stored any of the abundant spring rain. Cruel precipitation, the icy pellets that ripped living leaves from their branches, might aid his future work, but he saw no use for the flower-nourishing, blood-warm showers that turned the neighborhood from gritty gray to emerald.

  “Thank you,” Thorn said, his lower lip hanging down, showing bottom teeth like a row of crooked tombstones.

  “The fever is bad today,” Cole said, laying his knuckles across Thorn’s forehead. The skin had become so thin and translucent that the skull beneath was horribly evident.

  “Bring me spearmint tea,” Thorn said, and then, grasping Cole’s wrist in his bony fingers, he added, “You’ve become so strong!”

  “Yes, I have,” Cole agreed, without apology or pride.

  “I’ve promised not to leave you,” Thorn continued.

  “You have.”

  “I won’t see Midsummer Day, Cole.”

  “Yes, Darius, I know.”

  Their gazes locked. Thorn searched Cole’s face with the confusion displayed by the very elderly. It almost looked as though he didn’t recognize his apprentice. Then he looked livid, clenching his teeth for a second before the effort exhausted him and he slouched. “What will you do?” he wheezed. “After?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Cole answered truthfully.

  “Go back to those boys you loved? What were their names?”

  “Bobby and Cammy?” Cole said. “No. Not to them.”

  “No,” Thorn concurred. “They’d never accept you as you are now. You’ve relinquished them entirely. You’re not the man they knew. Not Cole. Not anymore.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “You’ll be alone. Have you thought about that, Cole?”

  “I’m used to it.”

  With a great effort, Thorn propped himself up, resting his gaunt elbow on the arm of the chair. He looked down at his hands, skeletal and covered in age spots, as he said, “I shouldn’t have split you up. They kept the stopper in your poison. I never knew it was so potent.”

  “You always wanted to see all of my power. Well, what do you think of it?”

  Thorn looked into his face, his features regaining a touch of their vitality. A smile of deranged pride twisted his mouth. “What does one think of lightning? A volcano? An earthquake? Beautiful! I depart this world knowing I have released into it a serpent, an angel of death!” He crumpled back against the chair, too weary to hold up his head any longer, and whispered, “Bring my tea.”

  Cole went into the kitchen and looked out the window over the sink. The abundance of rainfall had made the hedge roses in the backyard go crazy. They knotted into the prickly, shining leaves of the holly, the strong fronds of the rhododendron and the lilac twigs, pregnant with blossoms, forming an impenetrable wall of flora. Morning glory vines crisscrossed the entire hedge, like a net draped over the top. The grass rose to knee-height, and the leaves of the hosta were as broad as elephant’s ears. The branches of the weeping willow in the yard behind theirs hung over the fence, reaching almost to the ground. The slender silvery leaves obscured everything behind them. Cole snapped his fingers at the kettle, and a ribbon of steam twisted from the spout. He spooned some herbs from a canister into a mug and poured the hot water over them. Behind him, the oatmeal that neither of them had eaten congealed in beige-gray lumps. While the brew steeped, he returned his attentions to the lawn.

  Though it had showered the night before, the morning was clear and bright, the colors of the vegetation simplified to the jolly primaries of a child’s drawing. The world teemed with life, while death hovered above the chair in the parlor, waiting like a carrion bird above Thorn’s shoulder. Cole shrugged, watching the willow boughs sway back and forth in the slight breeze. In no time autumn and winter would strip them bare.

  Then the curtain of pale green parted, and two men stepped from behind. One was tall and tanned, wearing brown shorts that exposed powerfully muscular calves. He held a staff in his right hand. The other, a blond in a heather-blue sweater too warm for the day, moved across the yard with the same grace as the daffodil stems bending in the wind. Cole sighed, closed his eyes, and waited for the phantoms to dissipate from his mind. This happened from time to time; he saw them. Maybe Thorn sent the hallucinations. Maybe Cole’s own mind conjured them to torment him. Though his affection had ebbed, his guilt was tenacious.

  Cole opened his eyes, but Bobby and Cam hadn’t faded into the recesses of his memory where they belonged. Instead, they’d walked closer to the house and now stood beside the steps to the back porch, as solid and substantial as the maple tree or the concrete birdbath. Cole walked through the mudroom, where he’d found the burned debris and the doll’s head, and went out through the screen door into the glaring light.

  “Cole!” Cammy hurried toward him, arms outstretched to embrace his friend. But the dancer stopped a foot away, dropped his arms, and looked at Cole like Cole’s body was covered in venomous insects.

  “Can’t bring yourself to touch me?” Cole sneered, crossing his arms. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

  “Undo it,” Bobby said. Under his left arm he held a shoebox, and Cole knew what was inside.

  “What? Why?”

  “Cole, please,” Cammy said. He closed the distance between them and patted Cole’s elbow.

  “But why? Why do you care what happens to him?”

  “We care about you,” Bobby said. “We want you back.”

  “Ha! Since when?”

  “Since the night you sent us away,” Cam answered.

  “Cam watched you almost constantly, Cole,” Bobby said. “In mirrors, on the backs of spoons, in windows, in the bath water. Us not being able to have you hurt, but we could bear it. The idea of you not being you, though, of Cole Riley, our Cole, ceasing to exist, was more than we could abide. So please undo it. If you go through with this curse, there’ll be no coming back. No more Cole.”

  “If I don’t go through with it, I’m Thorn’s forever.”

  “You’ve made him too weak to hold you. Leave him weak, but don’t kill him,” Bobby argued.

  For a second Cole felt compelled to go to them, gather them in his arms, hold on, and never let go. He wanted to breathe the perfume of Bobby’s damp skin, bury his fingers in Cam’s abundant, wheat-gold hair. It seemed, as it had so many years before, that if they stood together, each connected to the other, no harm could touch them. But tragedy had visited Bobby and Cam, and Cole had been the catalyst. If he did as they asked, what would befall them the next time they left Cole behind, as they inevitably would?

  “Go away,” he told
them.

  “No,” Bobby answered, planting his feet in a wide stance and lifting his square chin. “Not without you.”

  “Go,” Cole repeated. “I don’t need you anymore.”

  “We need you!” Cam pleaded. “We’re not leaving.”

  “Then I will.” In his bare feet, Cole descended the wooden steps into the yard and stepped on to the little gravel path that led around the side of the house and to the street beyond. He would walk away from everything the little town represented: his rejection and misery, the glorious days when the three of them had been one, his remorse, his dependence on his lovers, and Thorn. He felt free. He needed nothing: not food or water or shoes. Thorn had asked what he planned to do, and Cole couldn’t believe how brightly the answer burned, drawing him like a night insect to a candle. Until he found a place where he felt he belonged, he would wander, alone with his magic. He’d just let it spill from him as he went, transforming the world in any way it would.

  When he reached the front of the house, Cole saw Thorn standing on the wraparound porch, supporting his entire body on his elbows by the intricate gingerbread railing. Looking at Thorn, Cole felt an echo of longing for his dark master; wistfulness for the fire of his black eyes, the sharpness of his body, the agony and ecstasy of his touch. For long minutes the two men stared at each other, and then Thorn smiled. A triumphant laugh, too robust to emanate from his shriveled form, rolled from his wilted lips.

  By then Bobby and Cam had joined the other two men. Both glared at Thorn with disgust, and then Cam’s eyes widened. “I see what you’re doing!” he yelled up at Thorn. Snapping the leather cord that held it, he wrenched his wand from his neck and brandished it in the direction of the porch. Without lowering his arm, watching Thorn in his peripheral vision, he turned to Cole. “This is what he wants, Cole. You’re doing exactly what he hoped you’d do. This is how he’ll destroy you.”

  “He wants to die?” Cole scoffed. “Bullshit.”

  “He’ll take you with him.” Then, as if someone had whispered in his ear, Cam asked, “Power in sacrifice?”

  “I’m not destroyed,” Cole said, raising his voice in annoyance. “I’m powerful and perfect. You’re just jealous. For the first time I’m the successful one. I’m in the spotlight, not either of you. You can’t stand that I won’t be waiting in some dump if you get bored with your brilliant lives and want to do some slumming!”

  Thorn cackled. Cam sputtered, lost for words, tears pouring down his cheeks. Calmly, Bobby said, “Whether you see it or not, Cole Riley is almost completely gone. I’m not giving him up without a fight. I love him.”

  “Don’t do me any favors. Why would I want to be Cole Riley? Cole Riley, who nobody ever wanted? Whose own mother threw him away? Who never accomplished anything? Cole Riley who scared and disgusted you? Don’t try to deny it, Bobby! I was the one who—” But he couldn’t bring himself to reveal what he’d accidentally set in motion, even at this final moment of identity.

  Taking Cole’s hands, his voice strong even through his tears, Cam said, “Cole our friend. Cole who taught us magic. Cole our fire and air. Our lover. Try to remember, baby. When we were boys together. How it felt, everything so amazing and new.”

  “Get off me, Cameron!” Why be an insurance salesman in a backwater when he could be a magician, the archetypal sorcerer-god of all the world’s mythology? He could rove the earth, doing as he liked, far above the judgment of man.

  But they’d had a tree house, and Cammy’s eyes were so green—

  “The world needs Chaos,” Thorn said, all of the wheezing vanquished from his breath. “It needs a servant of discord. Most never see him, few believe he exists. But he must be, like the moon and the sun. Seasons and time.” He skipped down the stairs as if he’d never been ill and wrenched the shoebox from Bobby’s arm, where the younger man had been cradling it like a football. Tossing the cardboard lid into the peony bush, he grasped the oozing, crumbling thing inside and held it high, like a proud father displaying his newborn son. Filthy wax dripped down his arm. Chunks, where pieces of debris had fallen as the wax holding them melted, pitted the surface. “Finish it!” Thorn yelled. “Kill me! Become me! Claim your god-form!”

  A chill zephyr circled Thorn, making his black robe and black hair flap, making him look like the legendary creature he was. If any of the residents of the quiet neighborhood noticed the bizarre commotion taking place in the street, they neither spoke against it nor left their houses to observe. Even the sun retreated, and the sky darkened with sheets of clouds.

  Intoxicated by the idea of ascending to this height to which he’d never dared aspire, Cole said, “Yes,” hissing the “s” like water poured on a flame. The black fire enveloped him, the updraft making his long hair point straight toward the sky. It poured from his mouth, nose, and eye sockets, incinerating leaves on branches twelve feet above his head, melting the asphalt beneath his feet, turning his clothing to powder, and cremating Cole Riley’s memories, regrets, aspirations, fears, and loves. Forged by the obsidian tongues of power, he transformed from man to idea, distillation, symbol. Naked, shining so that his countenance was unbearable to behold, the very image of the primordial personification he was becoming, he lifted his hand and pointed toward the transfigured heart of the wax doll.

  Cam, probably the only person able to perceive what was taking place, screamed and seized Cole’s wrist, struggling to point his burning hand toward anything other than the monstrosity oozing in Thorn’s grasp. His skin and hair burned, stinking, but he managed to force Cole’s arm a few inches to the left. When a jet of flame flew from Cole’s fingers, it struck the window of the round room on the second floor, shattering the glass. The pillows on the floor within caught quickly. Soon fire, red-orange earthly fire, licked upward toward Thorn’s slate roof.

  Infuriated, Cole threw Cam to the street, where he landed hard on his hip and elbow. His sweater had been burned away almost to the shoulders, and blisters covered his slender arms. “How dare you touch me?” Cole said, driving his heel into Cammy’s ribs, making the other man choke.

  A fist solid as a tree branch struck Cole’s right cheek. He reeled and shook off the dizziness. He’d kill these people, the tall man and the blond who was shielding his head with his arms, and then he’d finish Thorn and rise to his destiny. Exterminating them would be easy. He compacted a ball of blue-black energy into a grapefruit-sized mass in his palms. First he’d do away with the one whimpering at his feet, reduce his body to a curled cinder like those found under the ashes of Vesuvius in Pompeii. Coolly he raised his hand.

  Just as Cole prepared to strike, the man on the ground looked up at him. From clefts in a sheet of gold fringe, the most magnificent eyes peered out, shiny from crying. It was as if Cole had pushed aside a birch branch thick with yellow leaves and discovered a forest pool, jade-green and gilded with dancing light. His hand dropped a few inches. The fire ball flickered.

  “Cammy?”

  “Do you see what you’re doing?” Bobby asked. “I know this isn’t you. Come back to us, Cole.”

  “Cole?” How did he know that name? It didn’t matter. There was work to be done, inspiration to become. The bigger man could die first; it didn’t make much difference. The sphere pulsed brightly, the deep indigo of a moonless night. These distractions had to be dealt with. Again Cole lifted his arm.

  A slender piece of wood was thrust into his face. A red line ran diagonally down the center, the crimson color bleeding into the grain of the oak, giving it the facade of veins and arteries. Runes decorated the sides, and braided copper wire, studded with glass beads, bits of shell, bone, and pieces of polished rock held the split fibers together at the center, where the cleft was deepest. Gingerly, Cole touched the point with the tip of his finger. The second his flesh made contact with the wood, a series of images assailed him, like someone changing the channels of a television very rapidly. But the television encompassed his whole being, his universe, what he saw both outside and withi
n his mind.

  A pebble skidded across a chalk circle edged with Angelic script, and a blond boy clapped his hand over his mouth, eyes wide with terrified delight. A young man, shirtless, with a basketball wedged between his elbow and ribs, stood backlit by a late-day sun, offering a hand and a smile to a boy on the ground. Hands, deep bronze, honey gold, and soft pink joined around an altar of seashells, roses, champagne, and white candles that sat on a plank floor. A raven-haired youth with a crooked nose smeared lotion on himself with trembling hands. Oak leaves rustled, black against a cobalt sky. Lightning struck.

  “They’re its memories,” Cam said softly. “The tree’s.”

  “Bobby! Cammy!” Cole gagged, realizing what he’d almost done. Dropping to his knees, he clutched his gut and retched, bringing up a mouthful of bitter froth. How many days had it been since he’d eaten anything? “Get it out of me!” Cole screamed again and again. “Get it out!” Inch-long fingernails, dark with soot, clawed at his chest above his heart and at his belly, drawing blood and gouging away slivers of flesh. Gore ran down his torso. “I’m Cole! Cole!”

  It took all of Bobby’s considerable strength to prevent Cole from injuring himself any further. Though the other man sustained deep scratches from Cole’s serrated claws, he held his friend’s wrists immobile until Cole calmed down. Despite what he’d done, they rubbed his shoulders and lifted him back to his feet. Bobby pressed Cole’s wand into his hand, making him feel whole, himself, as if he stored his soul within it. “How? How did you mend it?”

  Each of them held up his left hand, displaying slices across the palms that had healed to ribbons of satiny pink.

  “We had to give it something of ours,” Bobby explained.