IN WHICH OUR HERO DEALS WITH A DAEMON AND GETS RELIGION

[little_lady_d]

Harlem at night was no place for a man and a daemon. No place in America was, but there were country crossroads where daemon and man could meet and no one would hear except for in song. Harlem hummed with light and life, and its streets thronged with joyriders in beaming automobiles, its sidewalks worn by restless flappers and floorflushers. Eyes shone from faces dark and light, old and thirsty, young and idle, and any one of them could illuminate Narcisse like a stagelight.

He looked worse for wear, and he'd worn his best tonight — the jacket with tails, the flashy Oxfords, all scuffed and ripped from wrestling with arcane powers on rooftops — and his golden skin gleamed with sweat and effort.

The daemon wore the golem's broken body, if wearing was the word for it. Somehow Narcisse had summoned it through the gaps of the contract, and it entered the golem, contract embodied. It shattered the bars, though the lock still floated over its heart, and iron curved at its back and over its shadow-limbs like a suit of armor. All shadow, it was, a silhouette with eyes of stars, and no mouth. But Narcisse heard it speak.

And powers that speak can be spoken to — that much Narcisse knew from grade school theurgy. "Care to shape yourself into something a little less tall, dark, and eldritch? I like the look, but the cops might disagree."

"This is how you envisioned me, and this is how you bound me." Its voice was cool as the evening air.

"I … did do that," Narcisse allowed. "But I dismissed you, too, and that didn't take. Going to tell me why?"

"I was invoked to save you. You are not safe."

"I'm a thaumaturge in America, and that's the least of what I am. I'm never safe." Narcisse smiled as he said it, and spread his arms, an orator at the podium instead of a criminal in the alleyway. "But I am saved. I didn't bash my pretty head and spill my pretty brains out on the pavement, thanks to you. And you have my thanks, if thanks is what you need."

"No."

"No?"

"Not yet."

"Then when?"

Narcisse wished for a human face, a human brow wrinkling in human thought, disdain-curled lips or joy-crinkled eyes. He couldn't tell, before this shadow-blankness, what the daemon wanted.

"Even a thaumaturge can't have something for nothing, can he?" asked Narcisse aloud. "Let's settle on a payment for your contract, then. Gracious of you to pick it up without one — but fair, as they say, is fair. You saved me from the cage-golem and the fall. What shall we get you in return? Dreamstuff? Truenames? Hearts of the slain? I can do you two of three."

"The executor of the estate will handle payment."

"The executor of —" Understanding bloomed behind Narcisse's eyes, brighter than the daemon's stars. "You mean maman."

"The contract was made in your name, before you were born to bear it. The sons and daughters of our house defend you and yours. You called upon me. I came."

"I didn't mean you. I meant the golem! I bound the golem!"

"I came as you envisioned me."

Sighing, Narcisse swept both hands back through his hair. "Lord knows I shouldn't tell you so, but I can't be summoning anything in the family name. I gave up that name years ago."

"Did you give up your blood?"

"Are you," asked Narcisse, "being rhetorical?"

“You invoked me by your blood, and bound me by my duty. Enemies pursue you. They would take your power and turn it against you. You are not safe.”

“Welcome to America," he said. "You know, I'm no safer with you than without you. People here remember the Emergence, the Riots. Even an illegal thaumaturge might turn us in to prove we don't all consort with monsters."

"If they come for us, I will break them."

"I appreciate it. Don't, but I appreciate it."

"Don't?" The daemon tilted its head, rather like a dog of swirling shadow and metal. “Why?”

"It's not nice, for one."

"I have no duty to be nice."

"For two, it won't protect me. You hurt anyone, all that gets is me in trouble — worse trouble than I'm already asking for. What we need is to not get caught. What you need is to not be seen. Can you do that?"

"I am limited by the form you bound me in." Was that irritation in the serenity of the daemon's voice? Even as it spoke, its form shifted, stars swallowed into nothing and night fading to invisibility, but the golem-armor still hung in the air like a standing skeleton.

"Fair, fair. But if you can't make yourself unseeable, you can make yourself unseen. Convince the crowd to look elsewhere."

The daemon's star-eyes flickered back into existence. "I have no sway over the minds and wills of others, beyond what is willed away in contract."

"Fair. Fair."

Mountain-still, mountain-stoic, the daemon watched Narcise. He cast his eyes to the light at the end of the alley — a sliver of escape.

"You sure about sticking around?" he asked. "There's got to be a friendlier realm next door."

"This is your realm. I will not leave you."

"Can you wait for me?"

"Where will you go?"

Narcisse straightened his cuffs — worse for wear, even without the daemon, but a lone tramp wouldn't get attention unless he looked for it. "To find a crowd," he said.

⇋

"People of Harlem!”

That's what Narcisse said. That was his siren song, his island the street corner where he stood, hair and eyes wild, hands out and voice ringing.

“People of Harlem, listen to me! Hear my story, heed my warning!”

A pair of girls in furs hurried past, not about to let a madman soothsayer spoil their weekend. Across the way, a fresh-faced shoeshine boy stopped and stared, eyes widening, wondering. Harlem was a stagelight, and Narcisse stepped up to play his part.

"Once," he said to all and sundry, "there were daemons in America. Once there were daemons on all shores. They came to us in mirrors, came to us in whispers, came with eyes like beasts and birds. They came and they walked like you, like me. They came to us from other worlds — came to the witches, the sorcerers, the so-called thaumaturges. To whom they came, they promised wonders. We could shake the sky with our words, they said, shape our world to our will like they did theirs.”

Narcisse looked and saw the shoeshine boy’s eyes, saw the brown, wrinkled face of an old man in a flat cap, saw a girl drag the fellow on her arm to a stop. They gave their attention, and he gathered it around himself like a cloak.

“People of Harlem,” he went on. “Once there were daemons, and we welcomed them in. We watched them in mirrors. We listened to their whispers. We bought their lessons with pacts and pieces of soul. Yes, yes, we made wonders! Yes, yes, we won wars! Yes, yes, we built towers of ivory, tall as Babel. But where now is Babel, my friends?”

“Fallen,” mouthed the girl.

“Where now are our ivory towers?”

“Fallen,” she repeated. This time, the old man’s voice joined hers.

“Where now are our wonder-weavers, our daemon-summoners, our mad wizards who broke the sky only to let riots pour in? Where are they, people of Harlem?”

“Fallen!”

“Fallen,” he says, and they say it with him. “By their own power, their own pacts. They looked and listened to daemons, and daemons let them hang. Tell me, tell me, good people of Harlem!  When a daemon walks among you, will you look his way? Will you let him dizzy your eyes, let him muddy your senses?”

“No!” shouted back the crowd in cacophony, then in harmony. “No!”

“Will you give him your ear? Will you listen to his promises?”

“No, no!”

“Will Harlem fall for a daemon again?”

“No!”

“But maybe,” he said, and said it slow, “you don’t speak for Harlem. Maybe it’s the Saturday sin-seekers and gin-eaters who speak for Harlem. Maybe the righteous don’t have a voice here tonight.” Murmurs broke the crowd like a wave. Bring it in, Narcisse thought to himself. Bring it home. “Do you speak for Harlem?”

“We do,” said the shoe-shine boy. The old man nodded his head, and the girl clutched her fellow’s arm, and a dozen more passersby stood and they witnessed as the wisp of a promise hung shivering in the air.

“Say it again!” called out Narcisse. “Good people! What do you speak for?”

“We speak for Harlem!”

“Say it for heaven to hear!”

“We speak for Harlem!”

The promise took shape, the oath took hold. In the language of the world, Narcisse spoke to the world. “So it is sworn. Harlem will see no, hear no, speak to no daemon here tonight. Good people ...” He smiled like a cresting moon, retreated with hands pressed in prayer. “You’ve given this fool preacher hope.”

That’s when he tilted his head toward an alley, where the daemon waited and watched with galaxies in its eyes. He walked over, coaxed it out without a word. It took a caged and clunking step on the sidewalk, into the streetlight, where it was an unnatural stain of sky against the brick of buildings.

But no one looked, and when they looked, they didn’t see. No one listened, and when they listened, they didn’t hear. No one knew.

Narcisse winked. “And that’s,” said he, “how it’s done.”

Comments

[ernest]

aahhh, the discussion of name vs blood, and what safety means for both Narcisse and the daemon. and then in the crowd scene he uses the language of influence mentioned in the previous chapter/post! (i think i've read bits of this a few years ago maybe? some of it feels quite familiar)

[little_lady_d]

here’s the proof of how long i’ve been trying to make a story out of this world and these characters. those familiar bits are from 2014! i’m just glad you still like them!