. . .
In late 2007, Bahlum comes to a decision.
“When we hit the atmosphere,” he says, “I think, I will catch fire.”
“Warm!” says Ixchel.
It is almost a moan.
“You’ll catch fire,” says Chan, “and then you’ll regret it. You’ll say ‘I should have moderated my ambitions!’”
“Ah,” says Bahlum, “but that’ll be the friction.”
“I’ll stay cold,” says Yohl.
“You won’t do!” says Chan.
“I will,” says Yohl. “The cold of space permeates me. That’s part of my jaguar magic, much like my ability to talk in space.”
“We all do that,” says Chan.
“But I do it through cold,” says Yohl, “while you do it by assigning blame.”
“That’s so,” concedes the magical jaguar, Chan.
. . .
“I will burn,” says Bahlum. “I will be burning. And I will think, ‘perhaps this is holy fire. The fire of holy righteousness and second-hand vengeance.’ I will plummet onto the back of a human target. He will stand as totem and proxy to the Mayans. He will scream.”
“What will he scream?” asks Ixchel. She is almost drooling at the thought of the warmth of being on fire.
“‘Help help!’” Bahlum says. He savors it. “‘Somebody. Anybody! A fiery orbital jaguar is using my mass to decelerate from space!’”
“There is nothing to be done,” says Chan. “Poor man! It is the righteousness of Heaven.”
In this Chan is incorrect.
That’s not the righteousness of Heaven at all! In fact, it is arguably an act of vice.
I don’t know where a magical jaguar in a decaying orbit around the Earth would even get the idea that this represents some sort of righteous Heavenly vengeance unless it is letting its personal biases and interests cloud its moral judgment.
The actual righteousness of Heaven isn’t anything like jaguars falling out of orbit. It’s more like —
Like, um, um. Hm. Like —
. . .
The actual righteousness of Heaven will be more like that seraph.
You know, that one, that deadly one, that herald of the world’s fiery ending. The one who will come, on the day of the Rapture and Last Trump, and stand there above the world, in space; who will lift God’s trumpet to his lips, and blow.
He will be terrible. That sound will be terrible. That is the righteous vengeance of Heaven.
. . .
He won’t have even practiced playing the trumpet, not ever, so you can just imagine how terrible that trumpet blast will be.
– 7 –
As for Edmund, he is not a jaguar or an angel. He doesn’t spin endlessly around the world or blow an awful trumpet badly.
He just grows up.
He becomes Mr. Gulley. He meets and marries Helissent Hobson.
Eventually he introduces her to the wolf.
“I wish,” she says, after a while, “that you’d shown me this before I’d married you.”
The wolf grins at her.
. . .
The wolf tilts its head to its side. “Approach, girl,” it says.
Helissent squints at the wolf.
“I won’t eat you,” says the wolf. “’Cause if I can eat you, it’s because you’ve gotten too close; but if you get too close, then you’re the kind of person who might just stay and become the mother of the man who sets me free.”
It is just so much noise.
“Seriously,” Helissent says, not budging. “A girl shouldn’t have to explicitly include ‘must disclose all gigantic, magical, talking wolves’ in a prenup.”
. . .
Then a kind of gull-wroth takes Helissent, a wolf-wroth, a magic-wroth. She takes out her phone. She sends a message to a friend. It says simply, “If I do not contact u in 3 days E. has killed me.” She does not let Mr. Gulley see it as she types.
She puts the phone back in her purse, sets her purse down at her side, and walks up to the wolf.
She touches it. She buries her arms in its fur. She skitches at its neck.
She hugs it.
“Ah,” says Mr. Gulley.
. . .
Helissent turns over. She leans back against the wolf. For a moment Mr. Gulley has a perverted thought but horror shakes it from him.
“Honey,” Helissent says, “We are not done. This matter is not done. You understand that?”
“Pardon?”
“You ought have said something previously.”
She straightens.
“So tell me, honey, w.t.f.?”
Mr. Gulley ponders this. He searches for words. He explains: “I am the heir to a man who stole the wolf-gold, so the wolf is wound through me. It is in me and within me. It is with me. One day it will bite my head off and then eat the rest of me, and the charge will pass on to the next child of my line.”
Helissent turns. She looks at Fenris’ great left eye.
“Eating people is wrong,” she informs it.
Fenris wags its tail.
. . .
Helissent turns back to Mr. Gulley. “Go on.”
“That is all,” he says. After a moment, he adds, “I think the wolf plans for my son to free it, so that it can ravage through the world and eat everybody. Or maybe my daughter, if — I don’t really know how wolf-inheritance works.”
She nods.
“Go on,” she says.
Miserably, he says, “I am hoping that I or my son will kill it instead. I am dedicating my life to this eventuality.”
She straightens. She looks over the wolf. She thinks inscrutable Helissent thoughts. If the wolf could read her mind, they would probably sound like: “blah blah blah blah Fenris blah blah Fenris blah blah blah eat? blah blah son kill blah.”
That is this artist’s rendition of the matter. The wolf cannot actually read minds.
. . .
Helissent chooses her purpose.
“Very well,” she says.
“Pardon?”
“I’m OK with this,” she says. “I’m going to be OK with this.”
“Thank God,” her husband says, and sags.
“One rule,” she says.
He blinks. He looks up.
“This isn’t covered by our marriage vows,” she says. “I’m not some wolf-slave to get caught up in your gigantic wolf drama. You can lean on me for anything else, and you don’t even have to ask, but for this — I don’t owe you squat.”
. . .
Mr. Gulley opens his mouth but can’t find anything to say.
“I’m going to go back to my life,” Helissent says. “I’m going to give my lectures and write my articles and attend my conferences, and I’m not going to be some sacred wife to some sacred wolf-gold husband, and if we do have a wolf-freeing kid or a wolf-killing kid, I’m going to be my own ordinary mother, not some mother out of wolf-gold destiny. I don’t feed it, I don’t clean up after it, and if it b— my apologies.”
She looks at the wolf. “If you,” she says, changing the pronoun, “bite me, I’ll make an end to you myself.”
Fenris’ tail wags again, and the building shakes.
– 8 –
Mr. Gulley is a giant of industry. He has a dwarf living in his backyard.
The first comes about like this.
The wolf-gold still runs through the family’s coffers. The Gulleys have proven impossible to bankrupt or financially inconvenience; their wealth is stuck to them, it is with them and within them, it is bound to them as inextricably as the wolf. It is an odd thing because money only works by spending; by the time of Nordri Gullwing, their riches were already principally different gold, and now it is mostly bits and ledgers — but there is something in them and tangled through them that keeps them rich.
Mr. Gulley’s father had idled with it; his grandfather had dabbled in world events; but Mr. Gulley himself decides to build a mercantile engine with which to kill the wolf.
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