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Barren had been in New York City for one day. At first, he hid in a doorway, covered in a filthy blanket, studying the onslaught of noise that was as the clash of arms on a furious, never-ending battlefield. He traced the many sounds, each to their sources. He even saw the rampaging red beast of a machine that emitted wails and whoops as if it had been wounded and refused to die. He had an infallible instinct for danger, and here he quickly felt safe. More important, there was little magic to be worried about. He moved into the streets. The things that surprised him most about these people were … well, where to begin?
Their faces were an obscenity, scrubbed and as bereft of hair as the arses of babies. Most of these moonlike visages were topped by hair that framed the face in ridiculous lengths and shapes, and the hair itself was often painted with dyes. As if that were not enough, some humans wore devices like sticks tied together and holding pieces of glass or obsidian before the eyes. Many wore blinking shell-like objects, clinging to their ears as they talked insanely to themselves.
The smells were worse. They were overpowering, so redolent of alchemy and artifice that it gagged him. The faces all carried an odorous trail of exotic unguents to make the natural stink of man and beast seem like perfume on a warm spring night. Barren was used to reeks that would shame a buzzard off a gutcart, but this was worse. He would, as always, adjust.
He stood, draped in his blanket in a long underground grotto filled with people scurrying like a disturbed nest of termites. His study was progressing well. These beasts were soft, obsessed with themselves, assaulting each other with the obscene displays of their faces, but seeing precious little, so that he could move among them without worry.
Later that day, he waited in a partially wooded expanse, surrounded by the noise and crowds. Swans and geese swam in a small lake. Autumn still grasped root and branch as it was pulled once more into the coldness of the earth to make way for the oncoming Snow Giants.
Here he was as invisible as a tree in a dense wood, and for just a moment he closed his eyes and let rest enfold him. He dreamt at the edge of sleep, hearing bulldrums echo and talk in the far distance. Summons to an ancient mustering.
But his instincts told him otherwise. He roused to wakefulness and studied this park.
It reminded him of a place he’d been as a boy, long before a troupe of dark minstrels had come to his hamlet. A place he knew before he had gone away, half voluntarily, half seduced by the wonder of escape from the drudgery of long toil and early death that was his family’s lot.
Once in that long ago, on a brilliantly hued autumn day with smells that were colors all their own, he sat beside a lake. He half-reclined in a bed of straw grass three feet high so that he was almost hidden at the very edge of the water. The sun dipped toward day’s end. The sky was so blue and beset with soaring cloud ranges of white and pink and purple that it made him ponder the very miracle of each slow and sonorous breath. A flight of elusive Lórien ducks, bespeckled in black and white with eyes of gold, circled and then came down in formation, cupping their wings and landing without a sound on the water not ten feet from him. Their leader looked at him with eyes like yellow diamonds in the angled sunlight and floated sideways, drifting with the slight breeze. At that moment, through the mutual submission of their gazes, he knew he could master any animal—for the hunt or the table, but most of all for the sheer communion of taking life.
That was the day that defined the axis of his being.
Today, however, had present duties. Some deep instinct, informed by the Dark Lord’s direction, told him where he might search. It is time, he thought, to dress and act as these fools do.
Unfortunately, he didn’t perfect his act quickly enough. Clad only in the stained blanket he had stolen from a sleeping form in a doorway, he was picked up by two city policemen at nine a.m. on Tuesday, the 19th of October, 2009.
He could have killed the officers without effort, but he knew that would attract more attention than was wise. He was familiar with these types of village officials, reeves or wardmen or whatever they were called here, and cooperation with them was easiest at this point. The language spoken here was strange, loud and simple. He knew he could master it quickly.
They bound his wrists with chained bracelets and took him into one of the large boxes that moved mysteriously, without the aid of beast or slaves. He soon learned a few new words: “loitering” and “Riker’s Island”.
He declined to speak for a long time, even as he was shuffled before petty officials. A woman asked him questions, but she grew fearful and left. Within a few hours they took him across a bridge to a place where he felt more comfortable, a drear and decaying keep made of red bricks. He guessed the sign above the gate read RIKER’S ISLAND. Inside was a warren of rusty steel bars and metal doors. They freed his wrists and led him into a larger room filled with a score of men. Later, they showed him a cot for sleeping.
After the guards left, one large and tattooed man scowled and offered a particularly and universally expressive pleasantry. Barren intuitively understood. Amused, he approached the man. In a few moments, no one in the room would speak to or come near Barren. The larger man crawled on his belly on the floor like a cur put to the whip.
Barren spent time observing what he learned was called “TV.” It was a portal through which images of small people and things and events could be observed. He watched and studied without sleep: movies, news, reality shows.
By the morning of the third day he had learned much. He conversed with some of the men in the room, who quailed at first but eventually cooperated. One showed him his collection of little illuminated manuscripts. “Comics” the man called them as he began to show them to Barren.
Barren now absorbed this world with voracious appetite. That evening he was approached by a guard. He was handcuffed. He was taken to a small room. A man came in—tall, lean of frame, cropped blond hair, and dressed in fine cloth with a colorful bit of fabric at his neck. He was not a guard. The man began to talk, most of which Barren could understand.
“My name is Bossier Thornton,” he paused. “Detective, Criminal Investigations. You have the right to remain silent.”
No reply.
“Can you speak?”
Silence.
“What is your name?”
More silence.
“Do you know where you are?”
Barren studied the fool in front of him. He could read him as plainly as auroch tracks. The man was stupidly ambitious, and therefore worthy of contempt. Barren decided to play with him.
“I’m in … Riker’s Island?”
“Good. Now do you know where that is?”
“It’s either in New York City or a place in a … Mar-vel co-mic.”
The detective leaned back.
“How do you know which?”
“I’m learning to read. Co-mics. I’m here. The guys have them in there. I read that Riker’s Island is a place that holds bad guys and … super villains.
Bossier was an ardent fisherman of the shoals and bays of the criminal sea. He sometimes took the Riker’s duty out of curiosity, just to see what sorts of people were getting caught in the net. This was an odd fish.
He flipped through the thin processing file for this detainee. “Where are you from?”
“The Source.”
Bossier looked up, prepared to give this guy the don’t-be-a-wise-ass speech. He stopped. With the certainty of a mug shot or a positive DNA and prints match, or a rap sheet of prior convictions—none of which existed anywhere for this man— Bossier knew that here was a killer. He knew it from the man’s eyes. They were steel marbles, glistening ball bearings, that saw everything as prey.
“What do you do?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Like?”
“A … dame.”
The sneery way he said it was so stupid it was funny, like a bad amateur Bogey-impressionist.
The man was creepy, but there was no basis to hold him. His processing form made that clear. This one would have to be thrown back in to the sea.
“You want to get out of here?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Looks like you’ll be out tomorrow afternoon.”
Bossier got up and left.
A guard returned Barren to the group lockup. Once there, Barren persuaded one burly inmate to retrieve some scissors stashed in a wall crevice. The man, a hardened felon who specialized in brutalizing his victims, cut and snipped Barren’s hair with the careful detail and pandering chit-chat of a docile barber. He fashioned it as Barren indicated, pointing to a cluster of detainees with Mohawks. He then used soap and a little blue scraper to meticulously shave Barren’s beard.
Thus transformed, Barren sat on the edge of his cot, feeling the strange tingle of newly exposed skin and the anticipation of a stalk. A hunt that would result in his prize.
At ten the next evening, after four days at Riker’s Island, Barren was released back into the city. He was now equipped with an educational jumpstart, second hand clothes, and twenty dollars in his pocket. Ready for primetime. He was even starting to think in modern vernacular.