Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

I Walk Among You (Prologue)

I walk among you, but I am not of you.

I stand on the same street corners, ride the same buses, climb the same stairs as you, but you do not see me, you do not hear me. I breathe the same air, taste the same food, smell the same roses as you, but these do not touch me, for I am nothing.

I stare deeply into your eyes, and I see not what you are, but what you could be, what you long to be, and all the hopes of all the ages that are bound up in your gifts, waiting to be unleashed. But I, the kindler of dreams, have no hopes to call my own.

I sleep as you sleep, but my dreams are not my own; they are your dreams, the dreams of all mankind. They are dreams that call to me even in my slumber, dreams that draw me to you, dreams that beg me to destroy you, then raise you up again out of the ashes of your demise.

I walk among you, but I am not of you. I am the Emissary of Pierides. I am Kindle.

Pyre's Dream

Pyre went directly from sound asleep to wide awake, without any intermediary steps of groggy confusion and sleepiness. It wasn't the incessant ringing or buzzing of an alarm clock that brought him into abrupt consciousness, nor was it a courtesy wake-up call from the front desk. Pyre had not set an alarm, and he had not asked for a call.

No, Pyre was awakened by a dream. A dream that was startling in its vivid color, its gentle poignancy, and its sweet simplicity. It was a dream about two children, an older brother and a preschool sister, playing in a park, and the little girl kissing her big brother's finger when he cut it on the rusty, metal edge of a beer can abandoned by a playground bench.

Or, to be strictly accurate, he was awakened by a dream of a painting of that poignant scene.

The dream was more vivid today than it ever had been before, and Pyre knew he was getting close to the source of the dream. "I'm in the right city," he told himself as he swiftly pulled on the same clothing he had worn yesterday.

Today the dream was so vivid, so clear, that Pyre could see both the concern and the hero worship in the eyes of the little girl depicted in the painting. It was as though the acrylic girl cried out, How could you be hurt? You are my invincible hero!

Not only that, but Pyre could also see with clarity the affection of a brother for a little sister, combined with the warring embarrassment of being seen by his friends, and the bravado that refused to admit he was in pain.

Pyre was not, of himself, touched by the power of the simple, poignant scene, but for the duration of the dream his mind had been an open vessel to hold the astonishment, the delight, and the wonder of all who would ever view this piece of art.

Now, wide awake, with no lingering thoughts and imaginings but his own, Pyre understood the talent required to describe this moment of simple but profound sibling interaction. He recognized the genius needed to capture all of those conflicting human emotions with just a few swift brushstrokes of vivid, acrylic paint on stretched canvas.

He knew that work of art would never come to be, unless he intervened.

Ladybug, Ladybug

Pyre passed through the motel lobby without a glance to the left or the right. Though there were three people sitting reading newspapers or waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, not one so much as blinked as he walked by. As far as anyone was concerned, he had never been there at all.

It wasn't that Pyre was invisible. No, there was as much physical reality to his body as there is to any human's. But unless a Kindle chooses to manifest himself, that physical reality goes entirely unnoticed. Pyre had manifested briefly the night before when he had paid for the motel room and collected his key. Now he manifested again, even more briefly, as he passed through the front door.

Manifestation while passing through doors was merely a courtesy for the mental well being of others nearby. If the door had opened - apparently - by itself, the lobby crowd might have cause to worry about their sanity. Instead, if anyone saw him walk through the door, they would simply think, Huh, I didn't notice that guy walk by.

Nobody would ever think, Hey! That guy materialized out of thin air, for the simple reason that he hadn't materialized out of thin air. He'd been there the whole time, albeit completely beyond the capacity of the human brain to notice.

Except for those brief, necessary moments when Pyre would manifest, and the eyes of others rested briefly on him, his life was a life of solitude and aloneness. But Pyre was made for solitude, and far from enjoying those moments of manifestation, Pyre felt exposed and intimidated when human eyes, with their idle curiosity, passed over him for even a moment.

Outside, Pyre crossed the street and darted down a filthy, trash-cluttered alley. He was in a dismal, poverty stricken part of the city by his own choice. For a variety of reasons it was simpler for the Kindle to stay in a low-class, run-down, motel than to book a room at the Ritz-Carlton. The cost was lower, and the other guests were less likely to put up a fuss if something out-of-the-ordinary happened during their stay.

At the end of the alley Pyre came to an abandoned freight yard, where a group of indigents stood around a 55-barrel drum, warming their hands over a trash fire. The men in tattered and bug-ridden clothing stood in silence. The only sounds were the distant whistle of a lonely train and the crackling flames licking at the discarded pasteboard boxes and wood splinters that kindled them.

It was an anti-Hallmark scene - the sort of scene no one would want to see on their birthday or anniversary or Christmas cards. Most people would speed up as they walked by - either from fear or from guilt over their own good fortune.

Pyre felt no fear, and he felt no guilt, so he neither sped up nor slowed down. He kept a constant pace, and hardly glanced at the homeless crowd around the smoky, dirty fire.

As he passed by, one old man, a simple looking soul, a bald and toothless fellow with an idiot's grin, sniffed the air and began singing a silly nursery rhyme, to the annoyance of all his companions: Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, and your children are gone.

One of his companions landed a good thump on the top of the old man's bald head, and the fellow lapsed into silence.

Pyre continued walking, certain that he was getting ever closer to his goal.

Inspiration (A Brief Interlude)

Art, in all its many forms, touches us. Changes us. Inspires us and lifts us up to higher planes of thought. Gives us hope.

The novelist, the actor, the painter, the pianist, the sculptor, the poet, the playwright, the songwriter - they are all touched by the Pierides, the Sisterhood of the Muses. The gift of genius, poured out on those blessed few, is not a gift to be lightly received, and few who receive it ever understand the magnificent gift - and the terrible burden - which has been squarely placed upon their shoulders.

The true genius does not live for himself, but for his craft, for his Muse, and for the betterment of a society which may never truly appreciate what it has been given. Sometimes these desperate souls need help discovering, accepting, and realizing the divine potential which is buried deep within them, crying out to be released into the world.

Sometimes, they need to be kindled.

Frustrated Genius

Eventually Pyre stumbled onto a more affluent section of the city. Here, instead of standing around makeshift fires and wearing tattered clothing, people talked on cellphones and dressed in the standard uniforms of 9-to-5 white collar workers.

It was a fall day, and there was a brisk chill to the air, but as the sun rose higher, peeking curiously over the tops of the city's tallest buildings, the air was warming. Pyre walked one street after another, knowing - feeling in his bones - that he was getting closer by the minute to his goal.

A park. That's what he was looking for. A place where children played, where careless men and women might discard an empty can, and where an artist might set up an easel to sketch or paint. He listened intently for the sounds of children playing, laughing, crying.

Very close.

Pyre picked up his pace, walking along the edge of the sidewalk in order to avoid running into pedestrians who, like blind men, never saw him coming. Occasionally he stepped down off the curb to get out of the way of a speeding bicycle messenger, or to avoid dogs on leashes that - for whatever reason - could always sense his presence, and would drive their masters crazy with insistent barking at nothing.

Around the corner, and two more blocks down, there it was. Roosevelt Park. Children, dressed in muddy play clothes and light jackets, raced with wild abandon around the playground. Up the slide ladder they would go, then down the slippery slope, then repeat. Again. And again. Pyre had never been able to understand the sheer delight of this repetitive, pointless behavior. Other children sat on a merry-go-round and screamed with excitement as the device spun ever faster. Even more pointless.

In benches all around the park parents and nannies sat conversing with one another, sharing stories of the cute things - or the irritating things - their children had done. Pyre could easy spot the nervous, untrusting ones; they were the ones who, with great regularity, peered around to find out what their children were up to. Others seemed content to ignore the young ones and devote themselves to grown-up chatter.

At a short distance from the parents on their benches, and at a slightly greater distance from the laughing children, stood the object of Pyre's relentless search.

She was a young woman, probably in her early twenties. A college student, maybe. She had a thin face and a wild mass of long hair that was either a sign of careless indifference to appearances or a carefully studied effect designed to make a personal statement. Pyre had no way of knowing what that statement might be. She wore a baggy sweatshirt and even baggier sweatpants, and both were smeared with dabs of paint in various shades of red, blue, green, and ochre.

In front of her was a cheap metal easel, and a stretched canvas on which she was persistently dabbing color from her palette.

She was not part of the mayhem of the park; she stood close enough to the playground that she could see the children well, but far enough away to avoid becoming a casualty of their careless play. Occasionally both children and adults would deliberately wander past her to look over her shoulder and see what she was painting.

Unlike those curious passersby, Pyre did not walk behind her, but in front of her. He didn't care to see her painting; he knew that it would not move him as it might move others. He was, after all, not a Muse, but merely their Emissary. Appreciation of art was not one of the gifts he had been given.

What Pyre needed to see was not her art, but her face. Her eyes. He stood directly in front of her, with the canvas between the two of them, and stared at her. She didn't notice his presence.

Her gaze darted swiftly from her canvas to her palette to the subjects she was painting. The rapid-fire movement of her eyes was dizzying to watch. Oddly, although she was unaware of him, she could not see anything behind him. Without realizing she was doing so, she would lean a little bit to the left, or to the right, to see the subjects of her painting - subjects which should have been in her direct line of sight.

Pyre watched her, unblinking, for several minutes. He watched those intense blue eyes, and he saw in her what he had seen so many times before. Frustrated genius. The agony of a soul that knew it was destined for something great, but could not reach out and grasp onto greatness. Could not grasp it because something stood in the way, just as surely as Pyre, unseen, stood between her and her subject.

He would find it, whatever it was that halted her at the threshold of genius. He would find it, and he would destroy it.

Observation

For three weeks and two days, Pyre followed the artist everywhere. When she went to a Business Management class at the community college, Pyre followed. When she visited her widow mother in the suburbs, or went to Mass, Pyre was there. If she stopped at the internet cafe, Pyre stood over her shoulder and watched what websites she visited, and read the emails she wrote and received. When she was in the college library, studying or doing research, Pyre sat across the table from her and stared into her eyes as she read.

He followed her when she visited art gallery after art gallery, paintings in hand, and tried to persuade the gallery to display her work. Less prestigious galleries would take her work, but these galleries did not interest her.

He even sat by her bed at night, listening to her snore, hoping to hear words spoken in her sleep that would give some hint to the dreams which tormented her slumber.

During the course of those twenty-three days, Pyre learned a great deal about the struggling and frustrated young artist. He learned that she was a college student, studying for a career she didn't want. He learned that she had one sister, no brothers, and that her father had died of cancer two years previously. He also learned that she was desperately looking for a part-time job somewhere - anywhere - to help pay her bills, put her through college, and cover the cost of her art supplies.

Her mother, he discovered, had always encouraged her to pursue her painting full time, and had even offered to help her out financially so she could set aside all thoughts of school and employment, and embrace, one-hundred percent, her dream of becoming an artist. He also deduced that she had rejected that offer - partly out of a sense of pride and independence, partly in tribute to the traditional view of the "starving artist."

She liked both baroque music and alternative rock, 90's sitcoms amused her more than current television shows, and she would rather see a romantic comedy at the cinema than either a slasher flick or an action-adventure.

She was a picky eater, who studied the ingredients and nutritional information of everything she purchased, and when she picked a canned soup off the supermarket shelf and found a chemical ingredient that she hadn't heard of before, she would put the soup back, write down the ingredient, and look it up online before she would even consider purchasing the soup.

And her name, he learned, was Becca Fredrichs.

But in twenty-three days of constant observation, Pyre learned not one thing about her that would help him understand what stood in the way of her greatness.

Herald

On the twenty-fourth day of Pyre's vigil, Becca stopped for supper at a little quasi-Italian diner on the corner of Fifth and Hawthorne. The music was Italian, the menus were Italian, but the food, though Italian in name, was primarily American in texture and flavor.

She chose a four-person booth by a window, and sat so she could watch the traffic and pedestrians pass by. Pyre slid onto the bench opposite, and watched while she studied the menu. In twenty-four days she had eaten here seven times, and always ordered either spaghetti, lasagna, or fettuccine. Pyre wondered why she even bothered looking at the menu.

On this night she chose the fettuccine. She was halfway through her meal when a voice spoke into Pyre's ear. "Is this your girl? She's kind of pretty, in a dumpy sort of way."

Startled, Pyre looked up to find a stout little Japanese man with large spectacles and a crooked grin standing behind him looking from Pyre to Becca and then back again.

"Herald," Pyre said, scowling at the intruder, "is that you?"

Herald, like Pyre, was a Kindle, an Emissary of the Muses. The last time Pyre saw Herald, he had been a tall, thin-faced American Indian, complete with traditional Indian garb. The next time Pyre saw him, Harald had been an Eskimo. He never manifested - not even to other Kindles - in the same form more than once. It seemed to amuse him. Pyre was still waiting for the day when Herald would show up with purple skin and tentacles. It wouldn't surprise Pyre at all.

"The one and only," Herald said. "Push over." He gave Pyre a little shove and Pyre slid down the bench, making room for his friend.

Herald sat down. Becca continued to be oblivious to both the newcomer and the conversation.

"Why do you always do that?" Pyre asked.

"Do what?"

"Change your appearance all the time."

"You know the humans do that, right? They stick rings in their ears, and noses, and tongues. They paint their hair blond, if it's brunette, and brunette if it's blond. And the women paint their faces every morning. I don't hear you asking them why they do it."

"They aren't Kindle."

"True. Well, my boy, I like to think of it this way. We Kindle, we aren't poets, we aren't painters or sculptors. In fact, we were never given any creative abilities at all, right?"

"Right."

"Wrong!" Herald dipped his finger in the olive oil and licked it off. Pyre slapped his hand and glared at him. "Wrong," he repeated. "It takes creativity to invent new appearances. Heck, it takes creativity to come up with the idea of changing my appearance."

"So? Your point?"

"This is my way of proving that they're wrong about us. It's my little bit of rebellion against the Masters."

"Whatever," Pyre said, losing interest. Whenever Herald got onto one of his kicks about how the Kindle were more "human" than they realized, Pyre tended to tune him out.

"Are you on project?" Pyre asked. Being on project meant Kindling a creative genius.

"Yes, and no. Right now I'm playing messenger."

"Oh?"

"Polly wants me to check up on you."

Polly. Or, rather, Polimnia. Pyre hated it when Herald gave the Sacred Muses nicknames. He thought, If I were a goddess, I would not put up with such frivolity and familiarity.

But Herald was Herald, and for some reason the Muses put up with his roguish idiosyncrasies. "What does Lady Polimnia want?"

"She wants a status update. What's taking so long with this one?"

Pyre shook his head. "I can't get inside her head. I've been watching her for three weeks now..."

"More than three," Herald interrupted.

"More than three," Pyre agreed. "And I just can't get hold of it. There's something holding her back, I know. I just see what it is. I'm sure it's not her mother, or her sister, her school, the money...It's not any of those things, but I don't know what else there is."

"A man?"

"There's no man in her life."

"Except you."

Pyre scowled. "I'm not in her life. She doesn't even know I exist."

"Ah," Herald said, "sounds like the bitter words of a scorned lover."

"Oh, shut up."

Herald grinned, then pushed his giant spectacles up onto his plump nose. "Don't you wish you could just ask her?" he said, seriously.

"Ask her?"

"Sure. You manifest to people all the time. Haven't you ever even thought about manifesting to a project?"

"No, of course not," Pyre said, although the thought did occasionally cross his mind. "That's against the rules."

Herald smiled again, and his smile said, "I don't believe you." Out loud he said, "Well, all I was saying is, if you could actually talk to your project, you might find it easier to Kindle her."

"Well, thank you for the completely inappropriate tip, but I think I'll do my job the old-fashioned way - the way that won't result in me incurring the wrath of the immortals."

"Hey, whatever," Herald said. "I wasn't saying you should, just, wouldn't it be cool if you could. Anyway. My point in all of this rigmarole is this. Polly's getting a wee bit impatient, and she's talking about tossing this project to someone else if you don't get your Kindle-butt in motion and make some progress."

"Assure her for me that I'm up to the task."

"Shall I tell her one more week?"

Pyre didn't understand why Herald's relationship to the Masters, why they kept him around despite his oddities and his rebellious streak. But what Pyre did understand was this: For whatever reason, Herald had influence with the Circle, and if Herald said, "Give the kid one more week," they would likely give him one more week.

No less, and no more.

Pyre nodded. "One more week."

Scotland's Burning

Herald always made Pyre feel uneasy. It wasn't just his constant morphing into different manifestations. It wasn't just his little rebellions against the immortals. Pyre hated his constant insistence that the Kindle had more in common with the humans than with the gods.

Because if humans were cousins to the Kindle, that changed everything.

As Pyre wandered - more or less aimlessly, but making his way generally back toward the motel - he remembered where he was three months ago, and what he was doing.

It was a poet that time. He lived in a little villa just off the coast of the Spanish Mediterranean with his bride. He was a handsome young man, and she was a lovely woman with a cheerful twinkle in her eye, and a playful, joking manner. Even Pyre, with his complete inexperience of human emotions, could tell how deeply she loved her poet, and how deeply he loved her in return.

And there was the problem. The young man loved her more than he loved his craft. Every piece of writing passed by her eyes for approval, and he waited with nervous anticipation for her judgment of his work. Even worse, every poem was written not as he felt it, but with the intent of pleasing his beloved. His best works were crumpled and discarded, never to be read by anyone, solely because he knew she would not appreciate them. And the works he tried to publish, those were the ones she loved, but no one else had any interest in them. Day by day his frustration grew, and his poetry, with the rise of his frustration, grew continually worse.

It only took Pyre two days to figure out that dynamic. It was a strange variation on the eternal love triangle: a man, a woman, and a craft. Pyre understood that one of the three vertices of that unstable triangle would have to be removed in order for the young man's gift to blossom, grow, and truly inspire the world.

The next day, the lovely young bride was walking the rocky ledges by the sparkling blue Mediterranean when she slipped on a bit of unnoticed seaweed and took a tragic tumble. For two days her husband wrote no poetry; his time was spent searching for his disappeared love. On the third day her body washed up on a sandy beach miles away, and the poet was called upon to identify her. After screaming into the sky for a seemingly unbearable length of time, the young man sat down to put his grief and horror into words. Pyre stood watching over his shoulder as the words poured out onto the page and then, satisfied, he left Spain that evening.

But what if Herald was right? What if the humans were more like the Kindle than Pyre wanted to believe? What if the human race was more than just so many sheep and cattle destined to be herded by the gods and their shepherds? What if the life of one human mattered more in the grand scheme of things than a painting, or a poem, or a grand symphonic suite? And what if the life of a lovely young woman living on the Mediterranean was worth just as much as the life of a brilliant poet, even if she would never contribute anything to the great archive of human knowledge and beauty?

Pyre paused in his wandering, aware of a familiar mumbling, muttering sort of singing. It was the old homeless man in the freight yard. Today he stood by himself at the fire - all of his hobo buddies had gone for the night. "Scotland's burning, Scotland's burning, Pour on water..." Oddly, the tune he sang seemed no different than the tune he used every night - though he always sang different words.

Pyre sighed as he walked by, and tried to ignore the simple old toothless man. But the man intruded into his train of thought. And what of this old man? Is his life also of value? Even though his sole touch of genius seems to be the ability to recite pointless nursery rhymes, does he matter as much as the poet? Does he matter as much as me?

And there, at last, Pyre could see the real issue: though he was merely a kindler of dreams, a blunt instrument in the hands of the gods to perform their will, he considered his own life to be of worth. The issue was not that he might be like the humans, but that they might be like him.

The off-key singing stopped, and the homeless man spoke. His words were rhythmic, and he sounded like he was quoting a bit of poetry. "You walk on by my humble home each eve, and never stop to take a spot of tea." Pyre froze momentarily, supposing, absurdly, that the man spoke to him. He turned and looked directly at the witless fellow, but the man was blindly staring into space at a point several yards from where Pyre stood. "Think not that you can pass unnoticed by, just because my eyes do not perceive."

Pyre swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. He had heard of this before, though he had never experienced it. Sometimes other Kindle spoke of the old and infirm, or the young and innocent, or the dim and witless who, like dogs and cats, could sense their presence. But this old man, surely he didn't qualify - anyone who could put together iambic pentameter on the fly could not qualify as witless.

He looked about to make sure no one else was nearby, and then manifested. The old man's distant gaze immediately found him. "Were you talking to me?" Pyre demanded.

"Ah, my friend, how could you even doubt?" the nursery-rhyme poet said, still in a sing-song reciting tone, "You see that there is no one else about."

"How did you know I was there?"

The old man seemed not to understand the question, and after a moment his eyes glazed a bit, and he returned to singing Scotland's Burning, having completely forgotten about Pyre.

Troubled, and wondering what this strange encounter might mean, Pyre continued on his path back to the motel.

Jelly Donut Mishap

Despite Herald's wild suggestions about manifesting to his project, Pyre would never have willingly, or wittingly, allowed Becca to see or interact with him. Never. It was against the rules, and Pyre was not a rule breaker. It wasn't just fear of consequence and punishment that kept him on the straight and narrow; Pyre was a Kindle who believed in what he was doing. The human race was improved and enriched because of the work he did. He would never risk that, and he would never violate the trust the Pierides had placed in him. Never.

"Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?"

Pyre nearly choked on his jelly-filled donut. A squirt of strawberry jelly dripped down the front of his shirt.

The woman chuckled, but with more apology than malice in the laugh. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

Pyre was sitting on a bench in the park, watching Becca paint. Except, in his blue funk he had allowed his attention to wander and he had dropped his guard. With a cheap paper napkin that was too used and crumpled and shredded to be of much use, he dabbed at the jelly on his shirt. His hand trembled. He didn't look up at the woman, because he recognized her voice, and for a fleeting moment he reacted like an ostrich: If I can't see her....

But of course that was absurd.

"Please," he said, motioning for her to sit beside him on the bench, but still avoiding her eyes.

"Thank you," she said, then let out a long sigh as she sat. She slouched down just a bit, stretched her legs out in front of her, and hooked her elbows over the back of the bench. "Oh, it's nice to rest the back and legs after standing all afternoon."

Pyre said nothing, kept his head down, and considered his options. He hadn't deliberately manifested, and while he might get some sort of censure, the Muses would certainly understand that this was not a purposeful violation of their trust. The smart thing to do would be to simply un-manifest and leave her wondering why she hadn't noticed him leaving.

That would be the smart thing. He was just about to do it when she spoke again. "You come here often, don't you?"

"Whu..." he stammered helplessly.

"Yeah, I've seen you here before, haven't I? I come here every day to paint." She motioned toward her easel which was set up just a few feet away. Modestly, she added, "I'm really not very good yet, but I'm trying. Practice makes perfect, you know." There was a note of frustration in her confession, and Pyre wanted to tell her that she was a great painter, a true genius.

Except - what if that wasn't what she needed? What if the thing she really needed was not someone to tell her how good she was, but to be her critic? What if by saying, "You're a genius," he doomed her to always painting at the same level of mediocrity? And what if, by critiquing her work, he turned her frustration into despair, and she trashed all her hopes?

Pyre could easily understand, now, why interacting with a project was strictly forbidden. Everything was so real, so present, so visceral. Every word had potential consequences, and Pyre did not have the immortal perspective of the Pierides to see the consequences of each word.

And none of this brought him a bit closer to understanding how or why he had let this woman - this project - see him.

"You don't talk much, do you?"

Blood rushed to Pyre's cheeks - a frighteningly human response to embarrassment - and he said, "Sorry."

"Tell you what," the painter said, "Let me buy you another donut, to make up for the one that's on your shirt."

Dumbly, Pyre turned to look directly at her, for the first time since she sat down. She must have taken his expression as an answer, for she stood up, and waited for him to follow.

Now is the time, Pyre thought, Time to get out of here.

He stood, and followed her.

Duncan

Pyre had not thought this through carefully. "Buying a donut," in human parlance, did not really mean "buying a donut." It meant sitting down together at a cafe table and eating that donut, while sipping slowly at a cup of hot coffee or cocoa, and chatting together for a socially acceptable period of time.

He had never manifested for this many minutes all at once in his entire existence. Nor had he spent so much time talking to one single person.

Project, he reminded himself. Not person. Project.

"So you like jelly donuts, and you prefer tea over coffee. This I know from observation. What I don't know is your name."

The question caught him just as he was swallowing a mouthful of donut, so he couldn't use a full mouth as a cover to stall while he thought of a name. He swallowed twice, then said, "Duncan," hoping that she would not make the obvious donut connection.

"Well, Duncan," she said, extending a hand formally across the table, "My name is Becca."

Pyre stared at the hand for a moment. He almost waited too long; the artist's expression was turning quickly to puzzlement. He grasped her hand and shook it firmly. "Pleased to meet you."

He almost couldn't speak the words; the shock that ran up his arm almost startled him into silence. Certainly, he had touched humans before; on those occasions when he manifested, a casual handshake was often required. But to touch, and to be touched by a project - there was something electrifying about that touch. Something taboo, something almost frightening, and yet, surprisingly pleasant.

Reluctantly, he released her hand and took another sip of tea.

"So, Duncan," Becca asked, "what do you do?"

"Hmm?" This time a mouthful of donut gave him the delay he needed.

"Job. You do have one, right?" She watched him curiously, as though she was beginning to suspect that he was not all there.

"Mm. I'm a student," he lied.

"Where?"

"Community College."

For the next several minutes the two companions - the human and the Kindle - chatted about college life. Fortunately, Pyre had spent enough time following her around the campus that he knew all the buildings, many of the professors, and even some of the inner workings and politics of the school. She told him which classes she liked, which ones she hated, when she hoped to graduate, and then, eventually, the conversation shifted to other topics: her painting, her goals, her family, and her faith.

He listened to her stories, commiserated with her frustrations, laughed when she laughed, and even, when she told him of her father's struggle with cancer, patted her hand gently. Mostly he just let her talk, for fear that, in talking, he would say the wrong thing.

She, for her part, had never before found such an attentive listener.


Far away, on the other side of the city, a ragged old man sat by himself on the edge of a curb, with his toes sticking out into the street, as though daring a car to run them over. He shivered in the cold, then his shivering turned to a tremble, and his eyes rolled about in their sockets. "Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack," he whispered into the cold evening air. "Jack Jack Jack, be nimble."

Manifesting

When the coffee and donuts were finished, Pyre began hinting that it was time for him to go. Both his body and his mind were screaming at the concentration required to manifest for this long all at once, and he was afraid that he would accidentally un-manifest at any moment, leaving her all alone at the table.

When he suggested that he had "places to be," Becca asked him one simple question. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

He should have said he was busy - maybe that he had classes to attend. Except that the next day was Saturday, and Pyre remembered at the last moment that the college had no classes on the weekends. He couldn't think of any other excuses; his experience of lying off-the-cuff was very limited. So he told the truth instead. "I figure I'll just tag along with you wherever you go."

Apparently that was the perfect thing for him to say, as far as the fledgling artist was concerned. She laughed, squeezed his hand, and told him to meet her at the part at 9:00 in the morning.

All the way back to his motel, Pyre cradled his hand in his arm, taking pleasure in the tingling of her warm touch against his cold flesh, which seemed to linger long after they parted company for the night. He was so captivated by strange - and undeniably human - feelings, that he did not even see or notice the homeless man, who sat on the sidewalk waving at him and chanting over and over, "Jack Jack Jack."

If anyone had asked him, Pyre would have said that the next few days went by like a whirlwind. He would have said that they dragged on like a prison sentence. He didn't know what to think of those days, except that every night he simultaneously dreaded and eagerly awaited the dawn.

The first day was a misery. For seven hours straight Pyre manifested while he and Becca walked the streets of the city, stopping at malls and craft fairs and markets. They rode the subway from one end of the city to the other, and Pyre was jostled constantly by complete strangers, who - he discovered - never gave him a second glance, even though he felt entirely alien among them. The mental strain of manifesting for that long was almost too much to bear. Three times during the day the strain grew so great that his hands began to tremble. Each time Pyre excused himself and went into the bathroom to sit, un-manifested, in a toilet stall with the door locked behind him.

The first day was a misery, yes, but it was also a pure delight, for Pyre was astonished to discover an awakening of previously hollow senses. A jelly donut was no longer simply something to stick in his mouth and chew methodically; it was a source of sweetness and fluffy texture that melted in his mouth. The voices, and the car horns, these were no longer a simple cacophony of meaningless sound; they were woven together into a magnificent urban symphony Pyre had never before recognized.

And the sights. He had always seen the buildings, the sidewalks, the bustling people, the blue skies with clouds skittering across; he had always seen these things with his eyes, but now, to his great delight, he was really seeing them as humans saw them, recognizing the beauty, the ugliness, the austerity, the glory, of all the world around him.

He began to understand why Becca was so eager to paint.

That night he slept more soundly than he ever had, in his tiny little motel room near the freight yard.

The next day, Becca dragged him to church with her, and though he dreaded the experience, he discovered there an entirely different sort of glory. It was the glory of stained glass and gilded pictures, the majesty of ultimate sacrifice made by the god-man they worshiped, the beauty of music that was completely unlike the urban symphony, and the wonder of a people who had the strange yet undeniable hope that there was more to this life than simply...life.

Plus, whenever he got tired of manifesting, he could drop out for a few seconds during a prayer, or when everyone's attention was on the man up front delivering the homily.

But in all of this, he was no closer to understanding what held back this cheerful, wonderful woman from realizing her true genius with the brush.

Becoming

On the fourth day of what any human would have referred to as a whirlwind romance (though Pyre would not have conceived of it in those terms), Becca invited him to join her for supper at her favorite little Italian place.

By now, Pyre had trained himself into perpetual manifestation; his hands no longer trembled, he no longer needed to lock himself in a bathroom stall, he barely needed to think about manifesting, and he had completely lost his sense of self-consciousness. It was becoming as easy for him as breathing.

The real challenge, Pyre thought, was going to be sitting at this little diner and pretending that he'd never been there before. It wouldn't do for Becca to find out that he'd been stalking her for more than three weeks, and had sat many times in this place watching her eat.

Even that, he realized, was going to be easier than he thought. Though he'd been here before, he'd never really noticed anything. The candles on the tables, the pictures on the walls, the powerful smells of fresh baked bread, olive oil, and tomato sauce, all blended together - these were all things that, less than a week ago, Pyre would not have noticed. He sat at their booth and stared with delight at all the things he'd never really seen before, and breathed deeply of all the scents that had never penetrated far enough into his consciousness to grab his attention.

Becca was in the middle of telling him about the prelim she'd come close to failing in her business administration class, when a shrill, angry voice blurted, drowning Becca's story for just a moment, "Are you out of your freaking mind?"

Startled, Pyre turned to find a skinny old man with a beaked nose and pale blue eyes standing at the end of the table glaring at him. Pyre stared back, perplexed and irritated. It wasn't until Becca stopped her story and said, "Are you okay, Duncan?" that he realized she couldn't see or hear the old man at all.

Herald.

"Uh," he said, "Excuse me. I need to visit the rest room. I'll be right back."

He didn't even turn to see if the old man was following him; if Herald was here to talk to him, then Herald would follow him to the ends of the earth to deliver his message. Pyre entered the bathroom, and then, three seconds later, the door slammed loudly behind him.

Pyre obscured himself, and turned to face the messenger of the Muses. "What are you doing here, Herald?" Herald no longer held a solid form; he still looked like an old man with a beaked nose and blue eyes, but he was fuzzy around the edges, as though he was manifesting as a vapor. Pyre blinked a couple times, and Herald looked solid again.

"I have a message for you, from Polly."

"I know, I know," Pyre said. "I only have three more days."

"That's not the message."

"Then what?"

"The message is," he paused, then his voice took on a shrill and angry tone as he shouted, "Are you out of your freaking mind?"

Pyre stood there silent for ten seconds, then quietly said, "They know what I'm doing?"

"Hello! Pyre, they're gods. Of course they know what you're doing. And believe me, they're none too happy about it. Fraternizing with a project?"

"It was your idea," Pyre replied angrily and defensively.

"Oh, yeah. Blame it on me. I never said you should do it. I just said it would be helpful if we could." Then he repeated, "Are you out of your freaking mind?"

"Okay, I've got the message, Herald. You can stop saying that. I've got things under control here. I've almost got her figured out. I'm close. I know it. Just a few more days, and..." he paused and squinted at Polimnia's messenger; Herald was fading in and out of that odd vaporous state.

"What is your problem, Pyre? What are you looking..." Herald stopped in mid sentence, as startled realization appeared in his misty blue eyes. "You can't see me, can you? I'm fading out." His voice had the shocked glee of a child who catches his big brother doing something naughty, and can't wait to tell his mom and dad. "So, what is it? Am I gone completely? Or just a blurry haze?"

Pyre said nothing.

"You know what this means, don't you, Pyre?" Herald laughed. "You're becoming."

"Becoming?"

"Human. You keep up at this rate, and you'll stop being Kindle altogether. Human. The life of a human, my friend, is not a life you want. So what is it? Did she get to you? Are you..." his eyes widened with surprise. "Are you falling in love, Pyre? Is that it? "

Pyre looked at him as though he had just said something obscene. "Don't be stupid, Herald."

"Then what? Maybe it's just the smell of olive oil making you giddy?"

"I'm just trying to do my job."

"Uh huh. Is that what I'm supposed to tell Polly when I go back? You're 'just doing your job?'"

"Tell her whatever you want. But tell her that in three more days, I'll have this..." he paused, realizing that he was about to say woman. "This...project...figured out."

Herald's vaporous form shook with silent laughter, which Pyre found disconcerting; he'd never seen laughing fog before. Then Herald stopped laughing long enough to say, "In three days? I think not. At the rate you're going, in two days you'll be fully human."

And then he was gone.

Third Day

Two days! That's what Herald had predicted, and those two words seemed to insinuate themselves into the rhythm of Pyre's life. The beating of his heart, the clatter of trains down the railroad tracks, the rumble of cars across segmented pavement - even the peculiar iambic speech of the old homeless man - they all seemed to be saying, "Two days, two days, two days."

Two days of bliss. Two days of terror. Two days of awakening senses that left Pyre haunted and hungry for more. Two days of wanting to hide from Becca, to stay away from her. Two days of discovering firsthand the meaning of the words "will power," and finding that it was not as easy as he had always supposed. Two nights of dreams that were now his own dreams - nightmares of being cast out of the celestial home of the Pierides, left to walk the mortal roads of life alone.

But even more terrifying than Herald's "two days" prediction, was that one shocking, perplexing question, "Are you falling in love, Pyre?"

Pyre had spent enough time among humans in his career as an Emissary of the Pierides to recognize all the signs of romantic love in Becca. He knew how she felt about about him. He looked into her eyes and saw that she would follow him to the ends of the earth, and beyond. It had happened so fast it seemed unbelievable, but he had observed human interaction long enough to know that such things were possible. Love at first sight, the humans call it. He didn't understand what he had done to inspire those feelings, but he knew they were there.

What he didn't know, what he couldn't possibly know, was how he felt about her. How odd, he thought, that I can understand her better than I understand myself.

Pyre had no frame of reference to understand his feelings; everything was so fresh, so new, so completely incomprehensible. What had Herald said? "Maybe it's just the smell of olive oil making you giddy?" Well, maybe it was. Maybe Pyre was simply intoxicated by the sights and smells and sounds that were all so new to him. Maybe the turmoil of his thoughts, the speeding of his heart, and the tingling of his flesh - maybe these were all just reactions to a world that was brand new every morning.

Maybe this was how newborn babies felt during the first week of human life. Maybe.

Back at his motel, the evening of the first day, Pyre spent a half an hour standing in front of the bathroom mirror, studying his face, looking for any of those telltale signs of infatuation that he could so readily find in others. But his own face was an unreadable mask to him.

On the second of Herald's predicted two days, Pyre planned to spend the entire day locked away in his room without manifesting even once. Perhaps that would slow - maybe even halt - this process of becoming.

But Becca had other plans. She wanted Pyre to meet her widowed mother. Pyre was no fool; he understood exactly what that meant, when a grown woman wanted to take someone home to meet the parents.

He wanted to say no. He tried to say no. He thought of a hundred and one excuses why he couldn't.

And in the end, he went.

That night, as always, he walked past the group of homeless men gathered around the 55 gallon drum. It was a cold night, and the men were huddled close together, even pushing one another from time to time, trying to warm their hands over the fire. There, on the far side, stood the chattering old poet staring right at him. Pyre sighed, faded, and kept walking.

The old man cried out, with a triumphant glee, "My friends, you all know me, that I would not lie - for there is my friend, the invisible guy!"

Pyre continued walking, until one of the other men spoke up, and his words rooted Pyre in place. "You crazy old coot, what are you talking about? If that guy's invisible, how come I can see him?"

Both startled and horrified, Pyre turned to look at the group, and found every eye fixed on him. He blinked, stared, then did something he had never before had to do - he concentrated on fading. Their eyes never wavered from the spot where he stood. Uneasily, uncertainly, he waved at the group. They looked at him like he was an idiot - a well dressed, white-collar guy, trying to be friendly to a group of down-on-their luck bums. A couple of them waved back. The rest just laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

He turned and fled, running all the way back to the motel without stopping for anything. "Two days," Herald had said. "Two days!" And Herald knew. Herald always knew.

Locked away in his room, he sat on the edge of his bed and panted, gasping for breath after his long run. He touched his face, his hands, his legs, as if he might feel the difference of being human. His fingers trembled, and his eyes watered. Never before in his long life had he ever felt so fearful, and so desperately alone. But even in the midst of that fear and loneliness, there was an excitement, the knowledge of an adventure waiting to begin, and the certainty of what needed to happen next.

The morning of the third day, on his way to meet Becca, Duncan stopped at a jewelry store and bought a ring.

Time Flies

Duncan waited until that evening to present the ring to his beloved artist. He would have taken her to an elegant, romantic restaurant, except he knew how much she loved that quasi-Italian diner. He would have proposed in the park, but the weather was getting far too cold for romantic walks in the park; even Becca, stubborn as she could be, had moved her work into her studio, and no longer frequented the brown and deserted park. He would have waited until spring, except, he simply couldn't.

When he showed her the ring, there in the diner, Becca let out an uncharacteristic squeal of delight, loud enough that the other patrons turned to stare, and then clapped and cheered as he slid the ring onto her finger. For the first time in his life Duncan loved being the center of attention. He reveled in the moment, and delighted in the pink flush to Becca's cheeks and the wet glistening of her eyes.

The days that followed went by so swiftly Duncan hardly knew where they went. In his years of walking among humans, he had heard many times the phrase "time flies," but his life as Kindle never allowed him to experience that strange phenomenon. One day he sat for an hour in front of a clock, counting off the seconds, too see if they really were passing by at the same rate they passed the day before. His experiment resolved nothing in his mind, and time continued to fly.

Becca wanted to meet Duncan's family and friends, but Duncan had already prepared his lie: he was an orphan, and a rolling stone (he was pleased with himself that he remembered that old phrase "A rolling stone gathers no moss," and correctly applied it to his situation). Becca accepted the lie with unhesitating trust, and assured him that her family and friends would welcome him in as their own, and he would never have to roll away again.

Becca's friends were shocked to hear that their painter friend went from single and unattached to engaged in less than a week. While some would take that as an excuse to distrust and dislike the unknown fiance, Becca's friends simply smiled indulgently and reminded themselves, "She's an artist," as though that explained everything. Of course, Duncan had to meet each of those indulgent friends, and the number of faces and names he had to learn and memorize was dizzying.

But he loved every moment of it.

Duncan was surprised to discover that Becca's imagination was already filled to overflowing with ideas for how and when and where they would get married, how the church would be decorated, what their (very nontraditional) vows would be like, where the reception would be held and what food would be served. It occurred to Duncan that Becca had been waiting all her life for this moment. Was it even possible, unbelievable as it might seem, that he, formerly an Emissary of the Pierides, was the fulfillment of all her dreams? The idea was both frightening and magnificent. And Duncan loved that, too.

There was one troubling thought that haunted him in the quiet moments that were not filled with the newness and busyness of human life. The week he had been promised by the Muses was now over.

Betrayal

It seemed that Duncan's concerns were unwarranted. He saw neither Herald nor any other Kindle hanging about as they planned their wedding. Not that this meant anything; as a newly become human, Duncan would be as oblivious to the Kindle as everyone else in his adopted race. He found himself looking over his shoulder, or studying the shadows that played across the floors and walls, wondering if one of his former co-laborers might be hiding within those shadows. But if the Kindle were about, they were silent and unobtrusive; there was no disruption to the wedding, or to the honeymoon, or to the beginning of their married life together.

They purchased a modest home outside the city; Becca said that she had lost interest in urban subjects and wanted to be closer to the natural world. Duncan had no objection to that. She got a job teaching art at a local elementary school, and he got a job working as a clerk in a law office. That, too, was a first. In all his years of working for the Muses, he had received a weekly living allowance from his Masters, and he had carefully saved and invested those human funds - as though he somehow knew he would one day need them. Every penny of his investments was used in the purchase of the home he now shared with his wife, and the bills needed to be paid.

And then Becca was pregnant. This news filled Duncan with joy and excitement, and not a small amount of surprise; he had often wondered if, considering what he was, he might be sterile. It seemed that even the joy of fatherhood was not to be denied him.

One evening in the winter of that year, when Becca was six months pregnant, they were sitting together on the sofa, cuddled close together, and sharing mundane stories of their days, as they did every evening. Duncan thought he would never tire of the sight, the sound, the smell, and the feel of her resting in the crook of his arm on these quiet evenings. Outside snow was falling in great sweeping sheets that blew silently against the windows and fell into drifts about their home. It was a perfect evening - a perfect evening that was marred by a knocking at the door.

Outside, bundled up in layer upon layer of warm clothing, so he looked more like a snowman than a real man, stood a stranded traveler. Through a carefully wrapped scarf his muffled voice explained that his car had gone off the road a couple hundred yards down the road.

Duncan invited him in to use the phone and call a tow truck. The man unwrapped his layers of clothing and hung them carefully on a hook near the door. Underneath the layers was a well dressed and genteel old fellow with a pleasant smile, and friendly eyes. He apologized for the dripping mess on the floor. Duncan shrugged, as if to say, "No matter," and led him to the phone.

After he made his call, the old man sat with them in the living room to wait for the tow truck's arrival. Becca said, "Would you like some coffee?"

He smiled gratefully and nodded. Becca excused herself to the kitchen to start the water boiling.

As soon as she was gone the old man leaned forward and said, softly, "Are you out of your freaking mind, Pyre?"

Duncan froze, and all the terrors that had remained hidden in the back of his mind for the past year came rushing to the foreground. He had never before known the power of human terror. It was a terror that was worse than anything he had ever experienced as a Kindle. The feeling overwhelmed him, debilitated him. He couldn't speak.

Herald smiled. "You thought we'd forgotten you, didn't you? You thought we'd forgotten your sweet little bride, too." He paused, and his genteel smile curled into a far less pleasant smirk. "The Pierides forget nothing, my friend. They don't forget genius. They don't forget their own. And they certainly...don't forget betrayal."

They sat in silence for a few moments; Herald waited for Duncan to speak, to defend himself, or at least to argue with him. The former Kindle had nothing to say - nor could he have said anything if he wanted, the fear had firmly clenched his jaw, making speech impossible.

Finally, Herald spoke again. "Let me tell you how this will play out, Pyre. That wife of yours, she will be kindled. She's no longer your project. She's mine. And unlike you, I will succeed."

Duncan unclenched his jaw and found his voice. "You don't even know her. You don't know what is holding her back."

Herald laughed, but quietly so Becca would not hear in the next room. "Stupid, stupid human. Of course I know. I've known from the very beginning. I've known from the first moment I saw her, standing behind that easel of hers. You want to know what is holding her back, Pyre? The death of her gift, Pyre, is you."

Duncan shook his head. "Not possible. Something was holding her back even before she met me."

"Irrelevant. More accurately, I should say, it was the idea of you that held her back. That desperate longing for love and belonging, for someone to share her sad little life, to sit on the sofa and tell pathetic little stories of daily life while they cuddled in front of a fire on a cold, snowy evening.

"That longing overshadowed everything she did. It colored everything she saw, and it made her brush tremble with uncertainty against the canvas. It was like a creeping, insidious mold that touched everything she did and defiled it."

Duncan considered this, then said angrily, "If you knew all this from the beginning, why didn't you tell me?"

Herald leaned even closer and whispered, "Because I needed you, Pyre."

The pieces suddenly began to fall into place. Herald's evasive answer when asked if he was "on project." His outrageous suggestion that Pyre should manifest to Becca. His willingness to give Pyre another week, and the most extraordinary thing of all - that Pyre hadn't been yanked from the project the moment he manifested to Becca.

"She was your project all along." Duncan's voice was flat, unemotional, but there was seething rage hiding beneath the surface.

Herald shrugged. "Yes, and no. In a way, she's just a means to an end for me. But yes, you could think of it that way. And if she wasn't my project then, she certainly is now."

"So what happens now?" Duncan asked, recalling the poet on the Mediterranean whose wife had taken a tragic fall to her death. "Will you kill me?"

Herald shook his head. "Pyre, Pyre, you haven't been listening. It's not you that stands in the way, but the idea of you. If I kill you, I haven't destroyed the idea, have I? She'll just go out and find someone else to fulfill her dreams."

The idea of Becca with someone else pained Duncan too much to put into words. "So, what, then?"

"To kill the idea, the dream, you must do one simple thing. You must betray that dream. You must betray her. Tomorrow, after she leaves for school, pack your bags and leave. Leave nothing behind, except one thing. A note, explaining you've realized you don't love her any more, and you feel suffocated by the marriage. Something like that - you can figure out the exact wording, I'm sure. No forwarding address. Nothing."

Duncan looked as though he had been slapped. "What?"

"It's amazingly simple, Pyre. Even your sad little human brain ought to be able to comprehend this. Your betrayal kills her dream. Your cruel abandonment leaves her nothing but her craft."

"I would never, will never do any such thing," Duncan hissed angrily.

"You will. If you do not, I will kill you."

"What happened to killing me won't destroy the dream?"

"It's all in the execution, my friend," Herald said calmly. "If you'll pardon the pun. If I have to kill you, your body will be so thoroughly destroyed that no one will ever recover even a scrap of it. I know how to pack your belongings, and - in case you were wondering - I can forge your handwriting, too."

Duncan stared with loathing at his former co-worker. In his panicked mind he tried to work out a solution, a way out, a course of action that would not leave Becca widowed and bitter and dreamless. He saw nothing.

"Come with me, Pyre, I want to show you something." Herald stood. "When was the last time you looked in your wife's studio, Pyre?"

Duncan shrugged. He hadn't really thought about it; when they were first married, Becca was constantly saying to him, "Come see what I'm working on." That hadn't happened in months. Duncan followed Herald across the living room and into his wife's studio. All the paints lay in straight lines on shelves, with the brushes in a cup, carefully stood upright with the bristles pointing toward the ceiling. Across the room a few half-finished paintings were stacked against the walls, and the canvas on the easel was completely empty of color. Duncan felt as though his heart would break, and as though to add insult to his injury, a tiny spider had spun a web from the unused easel to the blank canvas.

"This, my human friend, is your doing."

Duncan stared helplessly at a fly which was struggling against the spider's web. He put his hands to his face, and wept.

Back to the City

Eventually, after several months of aimless and lonely wandering, Duncan made his way back to the city where he had met his bride. He couldn't really say why he came back to that place; the memories that hounded him through the cities were memories he desperately wanted to lay to rest. Yet, in one of those strange human contradictions, they were also the memories he most longed to submerse himself in.

Occasionally he would walk through the park where he had first seen her, but he would find no beauty there without her. The cacophony of city sounds no longer formed an urban symphony; they were simply noises that overwhelmed him and washed over him, drowning out the one voice he longed to hear in his memory. Fettuccine, like lasagna, spaghetti, and every other meal he had once loved, all tasted the same, and that one taste was the flavor of sawdust. On Sundays he would sit at the very back of the church she had attended, but even here, without her, beauty was so hard to find. He would listen to the homilies about the love of God, and he would close his eyes in disgust.

He had met gods. He knew better.

When he tired of being haunted by these memories, he made his way across the city, and reserved a room in the motel where he had stayed for so long. She had never come here, so in this place he could be close to the memories of her without being overwhelmed. On the wall was a print of a mountain scene; Duncan removed the print and slid it under the bed. He replaced it with the one piece of Becca he had brought with him: an original painting of a sailboat harbored in still waters. Though no art critic would ever praise its merits, it had power to bring a small measure of comfort in Duncan's grief.

In the mornings he would wander the city streets, looking for odd jobs that would pay for his meals and his room. Sometimes it was stocking shelves for local markets, sometimes it was running deliveries. It never paid much, but it was always enough.

In the evenings he would sometimes walk out to the freight yard and sit with the old man who muttered meaningless nursery rhymes. In a strange way, he felt at home here. Not because the old man understood him, or because he understood the old man, but because they felt comfortable together, and because the old man never asked him questions he didn't want to answer. There was something peaceful about listening to a voice, and knowing that neither understanding nor response were required.

The months passed; winter turned to spring, and then to summer, and at last returned to fall - the season when he had first met his beloved Becca. On a brisk October day when leaves from distant trees began blowing across the freight yard, Duncan felt the stirring of both memory and desire, and he returned one more time to the park, knowing that his abandoned wife would not be there, and yet, hoping against all hopes for a glimpse of her.

She was there. And she was painting again.

Duncan skirted the edge of the park, careful to stay out of her line of sight; there would be no fading between them. Then his breath caught in his throat, for there, underneath her brush, was the picture he had seen only in his dreams - the heart-warming picture of the children playing in the park, and the little sister who kissed her big brother's cut finger.

Astonished, he stared at the painting, for it was exactly what he had dreamed, yet it was so much more - the power of that simple family scene brought him to the brink of tears. Then, as he thought of the family that he would never have - the baby son he would never meet, and the little sister that son would never have, the tears broke over the wall of his eyelids and plunged, like a waterfall, down his cheeks.

He left the park as silently as the Kindle, and she never knew he was there.

In the Motel Room

Back in the motel once again, Duncan sat on the edge of his bed and stared moodily at the painting of the sailboat. It brought no peace. Tonight, at last, there was no going back, no going home. Becca had moved on, she had been kindled; her dream had been shattered beyond recovery. Like the ladybug whose home was on fire there was nothing to go home to; all the dreams and hopes were wrapped up in that which was no more.

There was nothing left.

Duncan began pacing the room, slowly at first, then more anxiously, and then with the fierce anger of a lion caged at a zoo with nowhere to turn, nowhere to go but his tiny enclosure. He wanted to scream. He wanted to throw clocks and lamps and ashtrays at the walls. He wanted to smash the television, kick furniture, and tip it all over with a crash against the floor.

Instead he sat at the small plastic laminate desk in the corner of the room and stared, unseeing, at the sheaves of brochures and leaflets the management left in his room every morning. Restaurant coupons, festival announcements, theater production handbills, church advertisements - all were stacked in a disorderly pile under his fingertips. They had been collecting here since the first night of his stay. He picked up the top one and read it, not understanding or even noticing a word of what he'd read. Then another, and another, never noticing that he had read the same announcements ten times in less than twenty minutes.

Then the stack was discarded and upside down on the floor. Duncan stood and paced around the room twice, but came back to stare at the pile of papers again. Something about that disorderly stack seemed to be calling out to him. Something...

He picked the sheaf up and laid it back on the desk. He stared at the blank back-side of the last flyer. Something...

Then, with a suddenness beyond insight, he knew what it was.

He sat again at the desk and pulled a pen from the cheap plastic pen holder. With trembling hands and anxious, frenetic strokes he began to write. The words poured out of him like an unstoppable flood, filling the page with a suddenness that shocked him. He barely knew what he was writing, but he knew - he knew that it was right, it was what needed to be written.

I walk among you, but I am not of you. I stand on the same street corners, ride the same buses, climb the same stairs as you, but you do not see me, you do not hear me. I breathe the same air, taste the same food, smell the same roses as you, but these do not touch me, for I am nothing.

Page after page he wrote, not stopping to think, not stopping even to breathe, simply pouring out the pain and the grief of his loss. The words were his paints, the page was his canvas, and throughout the night he burned through canvas after canvas as he wrote the story of who he was, and what he had endured.

At two o'clock in the morning he paused. Not because he was done, but because his eyes would no longer focus, and the trembling of his hands made it impossible to hold the pen. He stumbled to the tiny bathroom and splashed water into his face. He stared into the mirror.

He had seen those eyes before. Those eyes were not his eyes. Bloodshot and tired, but more than that, they were ravenously hungry. They were the eyes of the poet who lost his wife to the sea. They were eyes that had been kindled.

Duncan slumped to the floor behind the bathroom's closed door and shut his bloodshot eyes, trying to remember. What was it Herald had said? In a way, she's just a means to an end for me.

Becca. She was never the real project. She was merely the means to an end. This end.

The irony of his situation made him want to cry and laugh, both at the same time.

Duncan sat on the floor for nearly twenty minutes, until he knew he could sit still no longer. He left the bathroom then, and as he re-entered the room, his right hand reached out and spastically clutched at a heavy glass ashtray. He paced the room slowly, his eyes darting to and fro, from wall to wall, from bed to bureau, never stopping, never resting.

Until he saw it. Or, rather, until he didn't see it. There, on the wall, there should have been a painting of a sailboat, but though there was nothing between Duncan and the painting, he could not make himself see it.

With a sudden and swift motion, he hurled the ashtray toward the wall, in the direction he could not see, certain that it would strike the Kindle who stood over his shoulder, watching him write.

Either he was wrong, or Herald predicted this move; the glass ashtray smashed against the painting with all the force of Duncan's throw. Both the ashtray and the painting crashed to the floor in pieces.

Duncan screamed, not caring that the neighbors on either side were sleeping. He picked up the clock, yanking it out of the wall socket, and threw it after the ash tray. "I am not a toy, Herald," he shouted. "I am not a plaything for the gods. I am not a mindless sheep to be mercilessly herded and driven to a destiny of your choosing! I will not be forced!" A lamp followed the ashtray and the clock, shattering against the wall and raining tiny shards of glass onto the floor.

If Herald was in the room, he said nothing; the only sound was a muffled pounding on the wall from an irate neighbor.

Empty and despairing, Duncan sat again at the desk and stared at what he had written. He had left off in mid-sentence. Without stopping to think, he picked up his pen to finish the sentence. And the next.

The stack of pamphlets was used up long before Duncan was. He finished on blank pages he tore from the back of a Gideon's Bible in the desk drawer. If the Bible had not been there, he would have written on his arm.

At five-thirty in the morning Duncan stared at his finished work, and he knew it was good. He laid his head down on top of the stack and fell immediately asleep.

He never heard the soft opening and closing of the door behind him.

Magnum Opus

When Duncan awoke, the day was nearly gone, and he found that he had drooled on the top page of his magnum opus. With gentle strokes he wiped away the wetness without smearing the ink. The previous night was an exhausting blur in his mind, but the stack of papers in front of him was the clearest, most visceral expression of his existence, both Kindle and human. He picked up the disorderly stack and clutched it to his chest.

At the motel's front desk, he asked for a large manila envelope to carry his papers in. Sometimes, even after so much time had gone by, it still felt strange to ask for things without having to manifest first. The manager handed him an envelope and he carefully slid his masterpiece into it.

He left the motel with the envelope carefully tucked under his arm, not knowing where he would go or what he would do, but with a strong awareness of the importance of what he carried with him. As he walked he periodically glanced down to see that it had not been dropped or stolen, or that the envelope had not flipped open, releasing the pages into the evening breeze.

His steps led him, as they so often did, to the freight yard where the old poet sat huddled by his fifty-five gallon drum, trying to warm his hands over the fire. The old man, alone again tonight, saw him coming, and his eyes brightened, twinkling in the light of the dancing flames. "Ladybug home?" he asked. His question jolted Duncan.

"What?" The question came out more shrill than he intended.

The old man's eyes gravitated toward the envelope Duncan carried under his arm. He pointed, and Duncan pulled back, afraid to let the old man touch it. "Pumpkin shell," was the man's irrelevant comment. He didn't appear interested in taking, or even touching the manuscript, so Duncan stopped backing away.

"No, old man," he said, "not a pumpkin shell. It's my story. It's my life story. It's who I am."

"Hot cross buns," was the even more irrelevant reply.

Having spent so many quiet evenings in the company of the old poet, Duncan was quick to recognize an urgency to the man's cryptic phrases. He wondered if there was a deliberate message in the crazy fellow's ramblings.

Hot? Certainly, for he had been kindled by the Muses. Could the old man possibly know that? And what of pumpkin shell? What meaning could that possibly have?

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her.
Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.

Something about that nonsensical rhyme seemed to resonate with Duncan's situation, but he couldn't understand the resonance. "Who are you?" he asked, more harshly than he intended.

The old man, who was no longer looking at Duncan or his manuscript, hummed a few bars of nonsense syllables, as though he had not heard. Duncan repeated the question.

Without turning to look at him, the old man replied, "I am the Diddle."

Duncan stared at him, uncomprehending, then made a sudden leap of logic and a stab in the dark. "You're one of us, aren't you?"

An enormous tear welled up in the old man's left eye, and spilled onto his cheek. "Before," he bemoaned. "No more."

"You once were a Kindle, but now you're a Diddle - whatever that means."

"I am the Diddle."

Duncan tried again. "You once were a Kindle. But now you're like me?"

"I like you," the man answered, and Duncan thought he was agreeing, until he continued, "You like me. We're a happy family." Duncan sighed.

He stared at the old man few a bit longer, but the old fellow had reverted to his nonsense syllables, and was entirely focused on the flames in front of him. With another sigh, Duncan turned and started walking away.

"I am the Diddle," the old man called out after him suddenly. Duncan stopped, and turned around again. "Hey! Diddle Diddle! I am the Diddle!" The old man winked at him. "I smashed up my fiddle!"

Duncan knew the nursery rhyme well enough to know it was the cat who had the fiddle, but he didn't argue. "If you're the Diddle, what does that make me? The cow?"

The man cackled, and even his laughter seemed to fit an iambic meter. He said, "The cow jumped over the moooooooon," dragging out the last word as though he were a dog, howling at the moon. Except that the dog was the one who laughed.

That's probably what Herald is doing right now, Duncan thought.

"So I'm the cow, jumping over the moon?"

"Silly," the old man said. "Silly, silly. Silly silly little Willie."

"Willie?"

"Little Willie was a chemist," he said, and for a moment Duncan thought this was a lucid, declarative statement, and the old man had stopped talking in rhymes. Then he continued. "Little Willie was a chemist, Little Willie is no more. For what he thought was H₂O, Was H₂SO₄."

Abruptly the old man turned away and sat on the curb. His body language seemed to say, "I have nothing more to say. You figure it out."

Duncan sat next to him. In his mind he was trying to tie together the pointless scraps of nursery rhymes that had been thrown at him. The problem was, how much of it was actually meaningful, and how much was completely irrelevant? Or was everything irrelevant?

He smashed his fiddle. That was easy to figure out. The old man was once a Kindle, like Pyre. He had been kindled - a gift from the Muses - and he had smashed his gift. "What was your masterpiece, old man? Your magnum opus?"

The poet looked at him with sad, bleary eyes, and said, "No more."

"You destroyed it. Why?"

"H₂SO₄."

That was from the Little Willie poem. A chemical. A highly corrosive acid. But Willie thought it was water. Duncan made another leap. "Your masterpiece - you thought it was good. But it wasn't. It was no good? Dangerous?"

He nodded both eagerly and sadly, "Yes yes yes yes yes." More tears dripped down his face. He swiped at one with his hand, but let the others fall.

Duncan shuddered. He couldn't imagine destroying his masterpiece. "What did the Pierides do?" The old man didn't answer, but even as he asked the question, Duncan knew the answer: the old man rejected their gift, so they doomed him to a life of witless wandering through the world, unable to put his gift to meaningful use, yet unable to stop using it. He shuddered at the cruelty of that punishment. No wonder the fellow had gone mad.

He spoke again. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row."

Then, with a sure flash of clarity, Duncan understood the old coot's metered rambling. "We're the pretty maids all in a row, aren't we?" he asked, but didn't wait for a reply, so sure he was of his understanding. "You rebelled against the Muses, because they had no right to try to stack you like cordwood in their garden of genius."

"Pumpkin shell," the old man replied, and it sounded like a non-sequiter, but Duncan knew he was agreeing.

He pressed on, "They took everything you ever loved, they ripped it away from you, and they tried to use their gift to you as a means to control you - to lock you away in a pumpkin shell - or at least, that's what they wanted to do. But you refused." Duncan paused as he imagined the old man, once a lucid young man, shaking an angry fist at the skies and defying the will of the cruel, dispassionate Muses.

Now the tears were flowing down the old man's face faster than he could have wiped them even if he wanted. Duncan understood that they were not sad tears, but tears of relief, because someone, after all those years of lonely wandering, had finally heard him, and had finally understood.

And someone took pity on him. Someone had compassion.

Duncan found that he, too, was weeping. Weeping for his own grief, weeping for the ten-fold grief of this old man who had once defied the Muses and paid a steep price for his rebellion, but most of all, weeping for shame because he had once been part of the pitiless system that this man most despised. As his tears fell, Duncan realized that he, too, hated the work of these heartless gods.

"You are a brave man, and a good man," Duncan said as he wrapped his arm around the old man. Trying to provide comfort and solace, he offered the greatest, most honorable gift he could think of. "I will tell the world your story, old man, and everyone will sing of your brave rebellion against the gods."

The man's well of tears suddenly dried up and he sprang to his feet, filled with anxiety. "No no no no no!" Then, to drive home his point, he pointed at Duncan's envelope and exclaimed, "Pumpkin shell! H₂SO₄!" His meaning, to Duncan, was quite clear: The work of your genius is tainted by the heartless crimes of the Muses. Equally clear was a secondary message: You too must destroy your tainted works.

"No," Duncan exclaimed, "I cannot!"

The poet stooped down close to him and put one hand on each side of Duncan's face, in a strange sort of embrace. Then he spoke, and his words were neither iambic nor anapestic, and there was no rhyme to them. By the slow and stuttering manner of his speech, Duncan understood that speaking without rhyme or meter was a torture to him. "You...are...a brave...man and...a good...man."

Duncan was angry, having his own words thrown back at him. He was furious at being taunted into rebelling against the Pierides and risking their terrible wrath. But more than all that, he remembered at last the rage he had felt the night before, when he understood what had been done to him. That rage was a thousand times greater than his anger toward the crazy old man.

But he could not do what the old man had done - could he? Was he really that brave? Was he really that good?

With sudden resolve, Duncan stood to his feet, and opened the envelope. He pulled out the first page, and his eyes casually glanced across the first words. I walk among you, but I am not of you. Before the words could sink in and capture him all over again, he hurled the page into the fifty-five gallon drum, and watched it flicker and burn in the dancing flames.

The old man laughed feverishly, and his laughter echoed up and down the length of the freight yard. Duncan smiled weakly, then joined the laughter. Without speaking, he handed the old man half the stack of writing. Together, slowly at first, but then gathering speed, they alternated throwing pages of Duncan's magnum opus into the flames. The sparks lit up the sky, and the men were warmed by its blaze. Duncan felt a twinge of regret, knowing that no one but himself would ever read the words he had written. He felt regret, but he did not stop.

As the last of the pages was kindled and burned to ash, Duncan wept, but his tears were mingled with the delight of freedom. The old man watched him and understood perfectly. He laughed once more, and after a moment, Duncan joined in. The freight yard was filled with the sounds of riotous laughter that swelled and echoed, then faded away in a joyful fugue of iambic pentameter.

Any Gift You Have To Pay For

This morning's advent message was based on the passage in II Corinthians that talks about the "indescribable gift." The pastor made the following statement: "Any gift you have to pay for is no gift at all."

That statement reminded me that I never wrote up my "comments" about my short story Kindle.

Because, you see, that was kind of the whole point of the story. In a way, this story is similar to my short story The Bovine Man which I wrote back in June of this year. In the story of the Bovine Man, the Bovine Man is a "god" who demands a sacrifice of his worshipers, and he doesn't care who pays the price, as long as the price is paid by someone, and he gets to revel in the cruelty of it. The narrator contrasts that "god" with the God he believes in, who, instead of demanding a sacrifice, becomes the sacrifice himself. It was an overtly religious story.

With Kindle, I wanted to explore the same idea, but in a less overt way. Obviously, since it is dealing with "gods" (the Muses) it has a religious element to it, but because they are Greek/Roman gods, we are quick to view this as a fantasy, rather than a religious story.

The plain and simple realization that Pyre comes to is that his gods have given him nothing for free; a payment must be made for his gift, and the payment was made by him. Ultimately, he - like the rhyming old man - understands that the only thing to do with such a gift is to reject it.

He realizes that no god is worth serving who does not value his worshipers more than he values the works of their hands.

Like I said, I didn't want to make this a blatant message, but I did hint at it here (in the chapter "Manifesting"): "It was the glory of stained glass and gilded pictures, the majesty of ultimate sacrifice made by the god-man they worshiped, the beauty of music that was completely unlike the urban symphony, and the wonder of a people who had the strange yet undeniable hope that there was more to this life than simply...life."

In this paragraph, Pyre had a brief encounter with a different sort of god - one who, like his gods, recognized that a payment must be made for every gift, but then, unlike his gods, chose to pay that price himself. A god who, instead of servitude, offered friendship and freedom. ("I no longer call you slaves, but friends," and "The Truth will set you free.")

---

Most of this story I had well plotted out before I started writing it (I actually worked out the storyline back in the summer) so it was just a matter of fleshing out the ideas as I went.

One thing that changed after I started writing was the idea that the old man would be - like Pyre - a former Kindle. Originally, he was going to just be a crazy old man who liked to quote nursery rhymes. I decided, after the first couple chapters, that it would be helpful to have him a bigger part of the story - without him, the last chapter would have been entirely the inner thoughts of the main character. Adding the poet's strange dialog, I thought, would make it more interesting.

This fall I flipped on the TV one evening and caught the movie City of Angels with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. It occurred to me that Pyre's journey toward becoming human was very similar to Cage's character's journey from being an angel to being human. I tried not to let that movie influence the way I wrote the story - but in retrospect, I think I put more emphasis on the exploration of sense than I would have if I hadn't seen that movie.

So there you have it - just a little bit of "behind the scenes!"

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