Note: All usual disclaimers apply. Just funnin' wit cha.
Grovellings: to the betas, jmm001 and Lemmypie, who make every sentence better.
Warnings: References to goings on in Scarecrow and Faith. Much bad language, internal monologues, irritations and misunderstandings, drinking, museum research, schoolgirls, contortionists, Céline Dion and her husband, and gratuitous het sex in unlikely locations. Brotherly angst by the bucketload, Written for the spnnorth challenge on LJ.
STF: Following Sam's nightmares of girls burning on a ceiling, bison falling off cliffs, and a diva-belted high note, the brothers head north, to Québec, where they find a Cirque du Soleil production of sheer evilness, La Céline and her minions from hell, and a casino. Oh, and Dean finds a contortionist. After getting Céline Dion to sing to his heartbeat. While Dean's off getting laid, Sam's trying to do research...
--
Sam had spoken first to an usher, then to a confused stagehand, and finally with the stage manager, who claimed that Sam's press credentials were unorthodox, but she'd see if anyone had time to talk with him. Sam called after her, hoping to stall.
Whether it was a language problem or not, the stage manager disappeared backstage, only to reappear moments later with a dainty figure in khaki and mauve, pointing Sam out as though he were a suspect in a police line-up.
Shit, Sam thought. He hadn't meant now, he wasn't ready now. Tomorrow was what he'd meant. His ducks weren't in a row, they weren't even on the pond. Sam's ducks were barely in the building.
The man that came over to Sam was almost unrecognizable without makeup: small, wiry, skin the color of breakfast coffee, the twinkle in his eye the only feature Sam recognized completely, even from his relative distance by the musicians gallery.
"What publication are you with?" The trickster glided across the open stage in a languorously liquid fast walk. A dancer, maybe. Lots of movement training, at the very least. Surprisingly deep voice for such a small man. Holding out a hand, not quite friendly.
"Sam Winchester," Sam said, shaking a desultory greeting. "Upstate New York Theatre Review."
"Oh?" Wasn't looking at Sam's face anymore, was looking at Sam's empty hands, not even a pad of paper or pen. Hair months past a cut that wasn't Dean with a Swiss Army knife, no jacket, dingy old hi-tops. "Etienne Marcoux, your MC this evening. But you remember." A joshing wink, all surface. "Did you want an interview right now?"
"Actually," Sam back-pedaled furiously, "tomorrow would be fine."
"Not a reporter's usual response. What story are you working on?" Etienne raised both brows and Sam had the distinct impression that he was being toyed with. He didn't like the feeling, never had. Happened often enough that he recognized it and had already decided how to play it: no aw-shucks kid this time, not with this asshole. Steel slid into his stance, pulled him upright from the slouch he tended to affect around shorter people. Meaning just about everyone.
Sam met and held Etienne's stare, a barely-there smile whisping across his lips. "I've heard rumors about this show."
"Rumors?" The trickster made a pretty good show of being bored. And ill-tempered. Okay, might not be an act. "Of what? La Céline always attracts rumors, and none of them are true."
"Just that the show is...unlucky," was the playground word Sam pulled from his vast Stanford vocabulary. Smooth. Still, theatre people were superstitious as all hell, weren't they?
"Unlucky?" Etienne snorted, not even slightly alarmed. "Nonsense. Are you working to deadline?"
Sam shook his head. "My editor's aiming for the end of the month."
"I might be able to arrange something interesting for you." His smile was particularly unsettling, like he had to work it around a mouthful of canary feathers. "Did you want to interview the whole cast?"
Sam's brows twisted, and he tried for nonchalance, was so far off the mark he was surprised Etienne didn't roll his eyes in derision. "Sure."
The shrug was almost the same as an eye roll. "There are almost a hundred of us. I hope you have a lot of stamina." There it was, plain: contempt. "Listen, the Chinese acrobats don't speak a word of English. Do you speak Cantonese? No? The Lithuanian gymnasts can't even look in a mirror without offering some sort of superstitious benediction, so if it's idle theatre rumor you want, I'd talk with them." He made an effort to look concerned for Sam's journalistic integrity. "Oh, of course they don't speak much English, either, but Béatrice can translate for you."
"Béatrice?" Sam repeated, wishing for a pen. Or a blunt instrument, a bludgeon.
Etienne nodded, his eyes hard. "Yes, her mother is Lithuanian," and he waved a hand vaguely in the air as though all Lithuanians were similarly primitive. "You remember her: the silk aerialist. The one that almost made your friend's heart stop." The trickster smiled widely. Sam ought to be scared, maybe. Or intimidated. But of all things, anger was uppermost.
This was a threat. He felt it in the marrow of his bones, shocking for all its obliqueness. Again, he felt how exposed Dean had been, and it was Sam's fault for bringing him here, maybe, but if it was his fault, then it was also his responsibility. He could look out for his brother. He'd have to.
"How do I find her?" Sam asked.
No smiles now. "Oh you don't," nothing in his eyes at all but a chilling and encompassing understanding that went beyond anything Sam could presently comprehend. Dark, probably evil, but so veiled Sam couldn't penetrate it. "She finds you."
Their gaze held; Sam's mouth worked back and forth, mastering his fury. "How do you choose your audience participants?" Voice cold, a retaining wall holding back floodwaters.
"Is this part of the interview?" Etienne asked quietly, sparkling dark eyes opaque as a circling shark's.
"Just curious."
The trickster shrugged, a dance of agile shoulder beneath knit silk. "I can usually tell which one will submit. The one that thinks he's confident and daring and who is a little too sure of himself. The one that will amuse the audience, that will fit the program best." He pulled his arms wide, but was walking backwards, away from Sam, back towards the curtain. "The one that will come to realize everything he thinks about himself is an illusion."
The fury was almost suffocating. "What if he'd had a bad heart?"
The trickster did not alter his steps and his grin grew wider, if that was possible. "I'm not wrong about these things." The threat was unstated and very, very real. "I'm not wrong about you, or about your friend. Or about his heart." The trickster gestured smoothly with his hands, once again turning to topics best suited to journalists. "La Céline does not give interviews. But her manager, René -- her husband, yes? – he said you looked as though you would write an interesting story."
Oh shit, Sam thought, suddenly realizing how relatively easy it had all been: getting the press passes, getting to the front row, putting themselves in exactly the place where they'd be vulnerable. Where Dean would be vulnerable, just coming off that freaky possession, his heart still not fully faith-healed into trustworthy health, not as far as Sam was concerned.
Sam's dreams didn't lie though, they never did. He didn't like them, but he trusted them. Thought: there is a demon around here. I bet it's not this little fucker in front of me, but he's close to it. Throw some holy water on this skinny little shit and I'll bet he squirm. Whatever demon this is, it wants me dead, and it's trying to play with me first. Using Dean to get to me. Fuck you, he thought. Here I am. Leave Dean alone.
Leave him alone. Where was Dean?
"That would be great," he murmured, all surface courtesy, fighting sudden panic. "When?"
"Tomorrow for the Lithuanians," Etienne shouted, because he was now off stage, a barely-discernable pale figure in the wings. "Go to Bistro 1847, on Maisonneuve. It's where the Lithuanians go sometimes; I'll see if Béatrice is interested in finding you, Sam Winchester. And we'll see when René is free."
Sam watched the curtains relax into their natural fall before leaving.
He rushed into the glassed corridor between the theatre and the casino, halfway to the Hilton tower, and saw streams of people coming into the casino, cars lined up in the covered entrance area, a helicopter landing on the roof of the five-level parkade. He had no idea what day of the week it was, but this place was jumping. He checked his watch: it was almost eleven-thirty. He was exhausted. He'd left Dean a good hour ago. It felt like a lifetime.
What the hell would he tell him? They were working with nothing: no bodies, no unexplained phenomenon. Nothing but vague unsubstantiated threats from a circus clown. Threats against Dean. Sam suspected what the price of protecting his brother would be, had dreamt it, hadn't he? As if he could say any of this to Dean. No, Sam had nothing but his dreams, and the girl on the ceiling, the buffalo, the high clear note held and held.
Suddenly, Sam stopped cold, his hand on the door handle leading into the casino's main lobby. The girl on the ceiling surrounded by flame, and he couldn't see her face, knew that she wasn't Jess, but then...and then, like always, it was Jess, and it caught him in a spot that was sore and abused and woefully unguarded. A stabbing shaft of pain lanced through him, lightning bright, almost too fast and too intense to be actually painful. Almost. He clutched his head in both hands, unmindful if anyone was watching, because he couldn't maintain composure and sanity at the same time. Sanity won out.
At least it passed quickly, and in its wake, a hole. Because it was always Jess, no matter which demon.
He stood shaking for a good few minutes, trying to calm himself, surprised and alarmed that his dreams – not a dream, not this, stop with the soft words for a hard truth – that this vision would come here, in a public place. He had to pull himself together before finding Dean, because Dean would see through a tough-guy act if it was half-hearted. Deep breath. Two. Okay, then: no mention of Jess, no mention of visions. No mention of the trickster's threats. No mention of the price sure to be demanded.
Sam didn't like it, didn't like keeping things from Dean, but it was for his own good.
He went directly to Bar 777, and found the flower and the program abandoned on a tall table. Damn. Looked around. Dean hadn't been in a gambling mood. What if...what if someone, something had...taken him? Sam's spine turned to ice, and he gripped the back of the chair as though he was going to fall down. Looked down at the open page, at the photo it was opened to: the silk aerialist, bent backwards, balanced on two slender hands, face angled away from the camera, body ethereal and strong and somehow elemental.
Goddamn.
"Bonsoir, m'sieur. Voudriez-vous quelque chose?" The server was at his elbow, a bowl of ubiquitous peanuts, a friendly grin.
"Ah," Sam said, trying for anything in return. "Ah."
"Something to drink?" she switched, still smiling. "I think he's left," with a definite spark, gesturing to the program and flower.
"Left where?" Sam asked. "I was supposed to meet him here."
"The flower? It's for you?"
Sam didn't like the feeling of being mocked by her any more than by the trickster. "I don't think so."
She nodded. "He left with a girl," she explained. "I don't think she was impressed by the flower."
Oh, well, that explained everything. Goddamned Dean. "I'll have a beer. Heineken?" Fuck Dean, Sam's worry said, clearly, as though it was sitting across the table from him. Fuck Dean and his stupid libido and his stupid fucking downstairs...
A hand touched his shoulder, a swift weight luring Sam's head in the wrong direction, a moronic schoolyard fake out. "Hey," and Dean was on Sam's blind side, slight smile on his face, looked at the table momentarily as though surprised that his shit was still there, then back to Sam, saw something in his face. "What? Had to take a leak."
Sam examined Dean: a little flushed, eyes wide with delight or something close enough to be mistaken for it. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, a happy grin not far away, only kept at bay by Sam's seriousness.
"You were taking a leak?" Sam repeated, daring Dean to dig himself a nice big hole.
Dean obliged. "Yeah, bathrooms are a million miles over there." Waved a hand in three different directions at once. "Avez-vous un problème?" Laughed at his own joke, thought he was a fucking comedian.
Sam's beer appeared; he paid for it as Dean asked for something that Sam couldn't understand, asked for it without looking at the menu. Sam took a long pull from his bottle. Knew he was mad, ought to rein himself in, edit a little. Not a chance, not as jangled as he was. Said flat out, unnecessarily provocative: "That was a girl on the ceiling."
Watched as Dean grimaced, took a seat. A minor hit, if he was measuring such things. Dean's expression changed, became all big-brotherly in a way Sam found particularly grating, especially in light of the fact that he'd just been fencing with a demon's side kick while Dean was off...getting laid.
"It was a circus performance, Sam." Like that was going to calm him down. A pause, and Sam could see Dean sizing him up, trying to make a best-guess about Sam's emotional state. That bothered Sam almost more than anything else that had happened in the last 24 hours. "It's a circus, dude. You know, circus...clowns, acrobats. No elephants, though," and he smiled deeply at that, as though he was thinking of something funny. His beer arrived, a little devil on the label. Dean took a glass. Used it. Might as well have written "I'm acting weird" on his forehead with a magic marker.
Sam tried for calm, because if he blew it with Dean here, now, it was all going to go to hell: Dean would get all protective when it would likely just get him killed. "A girl on the ceiling." Repeated softly, actually thought it was going to be louder and firmer, but he thought of Jess in that split second and that's all it took.
Sam watched it register on Dean's face, saw the way his brother pursed his lips. Oooh, brainteaser, Dean. "You think a demon's around." Not even a question.
"Probably." Fair enough. "We should be careful. I talked to some of the theatre people; they said that there's nothing weird with the show, but..."
"But you and your quivering jelly mold of gray matter thinks otherwise." Not looking at him again. Dean didn't seem to want to believe it, took another long pull of his beer. "I don't know, Sam. No bodies. Nothing strange. Well," shrugged with a grin, "nothing stranger than you."
Oh, nothing stranger than having a demonic clown clip a heart monitor to your ear so Céline fucking Dion can sing a fabric-of-the-universe-ripping-note while a girl burns on the ceiling? That, Dean? Another deep breath helped then. "How are you doing with the," and gestured to Dean's chest, to his heart, like it was something that they couldn't remember the word for. "You know."
Dean's turn to get pissy. Shit, he was embarrassed and Sam had just jammed his finger into an open wound. "It's fine, princess. How's your fucking head?" Tapped his temple with one finger.
Nope, wasn't going to touch that one, either. Back on the offensive. "Where the fuck were you? You just hung out here for an hour while I..." trailed into the realm of Shit I Can't Tell Dean, which was fast becoming a big fucking country.
"While you talked with theatre people?" Dean offered, playing back Sam's lame explanation.
"More interviews tomorrow with Lithuanian acrobats. Maybe that'll turn up something."
"What? You couldn't get the cute Chinese plate spinners in on it?"
"They don't speak English," Sam retorted, realizing too late that Dean was setting little verbal traps and watching Sam blithely fall in. Dean was laughing, covering his evasiveness with offence, just like Sam.
"I thought I told you to wait here." Why would Dean be secretive, at all, about banging a girl? Scoring with a complete stranger in under an hour in a foreign city was something that Dean would usually lord over Sam for days, would talk about it in such detail and so incessantly that Sam would start bleeding from his ears. The subterfuge was strange and unsettling and made Sam angrier than before, which was saying something.
"Told me?" Dean said, genuine surprise making him blink rapidly. "What the hell's gotten into you Sammy?" Hated nickname used like a stick. Wasn't even looking at Sam at the moment, was scanning the gaming floor, eyes jumpy, alert, awake. He ought to be comatose after the last day of hard driving, gambling and freaky-ass spotlight on his heart. Except for the one thing that always made Dean chipper, put a spring in his fucking step.
"That circus is off, Dean, it's just all...wrong," and though he tried to keep the worry out of his voice, he didn't succeed, because Dean's attention was suddenly all on him.
"There something you want to tell me, Francis?" Hard, a blank wall. No give. Giveless.
"That clown has your number."
"That clown needs to meet me at the backstage door." Happy just-fucked glow was a thing of the distant past; they were well into pissed off territory now. "I'll give him my fucking number."
"You're not going to do that." The reciprocal lack of give in his voice made Dean grow quiet, serious.
"I'm not?"
Careful, Sam told himself. Don't tell him he can't do something. You know what will happen. You're not Dad. You're the little brother, always and forever. Just shut up. So he sighed. "C'mon. It's late and I'm bagged. Let's get going. I could use a bed."
Dean followed, slowly, suspicious, and Sam wasn't sure if he'd averted the train named disaster, or pushed Dean right in front of it.
--
Just before two. Then an hour later. And forty-five minutes after that. Dean heard the whimper, his eyes gritted open, heart thudding, anticipating the scream. Whimpers. Jess's name, over and over. The word 'no'. Then silence, and eventually, even breathing.
Shit. Dean didn't exactly know what he'd been hoping for when he'd driven north, compelled by Sam's certainty and his obstinate will. Sam had no idea what power he had, either as a stupid fucking psychic or as a brother. Drive north, Dean. For me. Just do it, please. Hell, Sam hadn't even said please and Dean had still done it.
But it wasn't doing any good, was it? The nightmares were increasing in frequency, if not intensity, and Sam looked as though a good night's sleep was something he'd only read about it fairy tales.
Sometime shortly after five, Dean realized that he wasn't getting back to sleep, not tonight. And he hated lounging in bed; he needed to be up, doing something. Let Sam sleep. God only knew he needed it.
He'd left enough apartments and motel rooms before dawn in necessary silence to be able to do it with the same precision and efficiency that those little girls had thrown plates to each other on the end of sticks. He only went as far as the parking lot, surveyed the rows of cars, eyes smarting. Got a coffee from a nearby 24-hour store, killed time by going through the Impala's trunk and rearranging the contents of the hidden compartment. Sam, in a fit of boredom somewhere in Pennsylvania, had alphabetized the fake ids. Dean shuffled them like a deck of cards, because that kind of orderly shit just made you look weird.
At six, he checked in on Sam; still sleeping in exactly the same position as before. Better, a good sign, after last night. After that performance. Dean sighed, closed the door, didn't want to think about his heart, how the monitor had made it sound louder than god. He'd finished his coffee too quickly and immediately wanted another. Walked to get another, still killing time.
Tried not to think about the girl on the ceiling, about how Sam always translated that into Jess. Girl on the ceiling: smiled. For once in his life, it wasn't fire, it was silk. Béatrice. Usually he thought: Mom.
Oh, that's fucking great, Winchester. Start thinking about Mom and Béatrice in the same sentence. You Oedipal shithead.
Gave up, knew he needed to keep moving, keep doing something because he was going to drive himself crazy and he was going to drive Sam crazy and Sam was plenty crazy enough.
So he broke down and phoned, because it was something to do. And because he wanted to see her, and because Sam was one dumb bunny who was obviously as freaked out as freaked out got over that circus. Best if he took a look before Sammy freaked his little self into a knot.
Tie yourself into a knot. Made Dean think of one thing and one thing only, and his heart gave a little thud when she picked up, and it was louder than god.
--
The note goes on until it turns to color and Sam thinks his head might split in two. It is like a knife, both to his head and to other places, creates an opening, a place where things can go in and things can come out. A place where darkness lurks.
The color blazes to white, which is only right. And the white light becomes the sun and Sam is on his back in the grass, looking up at a tree. Its branches are leafless and he thinks it might be dead, but then he sees the buds and thinks: spring. Ribbons hang from the branches, move in the wind.
The smell of musk fills him and he thinks about dying, about burning away with the note and the heat. The note suffuses everything: light, and smell, and being. Suddenly, the white light is blocked, is blocked by something older and wilder and less known than the note or the flame or the ceiling. The heavy head of a red-eyed beast shadows the light and Sam knows that a price is being asked, and a price is about to be paid, and he's not ready.
--
With a shredded gasp, clutching at oxygen, Sam lunged straight up in a bed demolished by thrashing, knew in the space of half a second that he was going to wake Dean with his noise and movement and that words had been said out loud: I'm not ready!
Screamed, maybe, because his throat was raw.
The small room, two beds only a foot apart, was silent, expectant in the wake of Sam's shouted declaration. Dean's bed was unmade, the saltline in front of the door unbroken. Bags slumped wearily by the banged up motel dresser, clothes strewn everywhere. If he didn't know any better, Sam would have said they'd been robbed in their sleep, their room ransacked. Just Dean in a typical hurry, though.
Funny how nothing changed, really. Just the same set of signifiers, aligned slightly differently. Musical note, opening something that shouldn't be opened. Girl in flames, on a ceiling, a demon-orchestrated death. A price to be paid: Sam's life. A bison. What the fuck was up with the bison? If he hadn't dreamt them before seeing the show, he'd have dismissed the beast as something his overworked mind had just come up with, separate from the vision. But he hadn't; the bison was part of it, the beast. Between him and the sun. Oh, and now a tree, one with ribbons. Great. That didn't come from the circus, at least. But he hadn't dreamt of Dean, so that was good, that meant he was safe.
The writing desk with a burned out lamp was in shadow, but Sam could make out one sheet of paper there, a pen lying across it.
To an unpracticed eye, Dean's note read like this: Ms/ ju /or/eis /is /tosi-----Dsi/ vvirj. D. It was, perhaps, the most illegible thing Dean had ever left for his brother to find. Sam picked up the sheet of paper and held it at an angle, one eye closed. Normally, Dean's writing wasn't quite so bad. Only when he was going fast, when he was distracted. So, this morning, at around half past seven, according to the squiggle at the top of the torn motel stationery, Dean had been in a rush and not thinking. Not a great start to the day.
Sam translated: Meet you back here for lunch. Don't worry. D.
Why did he bother to sign it at all? Who the fuck else would it be? Housekeeping? Santa? The tooth fairy? The room hot and stuffy even this early in the day. He needed a coffee. He needed a lot of things. One of which was his brother.
Usual reasons for Dean sneaking out before Sam woke up: he was hungry, he was bored, he was looking to get laid. All three. Tried not to think of another one: was worried that Sam wasn't getting enough sleep. But if Dean was that worried, he'd be outside, tinkering with the Impala, breakfast waiting for Sam in a paper sack on the driver's seat.
Ever the optimist, Sam pulled on a pair of jeans and looked outside the motel door, directly into the parking lot. Last night, a full lot had required that Dean park the Impala some distance from their room, no doubt why Sam had missed its early departure, because the unmistakable car was gone.
He stood there, the baked asphalt burning the soles of his bare feet, wondering if the motel had a coffee machine in its decrepit lobby. Not likely. Sniffed the air, but only smelled heat and diesel. The motel was right on a main thoroughfare, a Couche-Tard and a McDonalds on the corner. A blue-striped bus lingered at the red light and Sam tried to peer around it, to see if Dean was sitting in a window seat, eating a plate of pancakes. Crèpes?
Then noticed the poster on the side of the bus.
A tree with ribbons, and a stylized bison with red eyes and Sam was pretty sure he was just going to have sit down on the hot pavement and rock back and forth like an inpatient at the asylum. Instead, and more usefully, he tried to scan the text, which was in French, actually much easier for him to understand than when in its spoken form. Closer to Spanish.
Trèsors de la Lithuanie. Got that, and the words 'musée canadien' and then the bus was gone. He moved three steps before stopping himself from running after it. This was what the internet was made for.
It took him .09 seconds to google the keywords 'Lithuania', 'museum' and 'Canada' and come up with: Treasures of Lithuania, now on at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Québec. Sam consulted the map in a much-mauled copy of the usual tourist propaganda he found sitting on top of the television. Welcome to the Outaouais, however the hell you pronounced that many vowels in a row. Ottawa area. Ontario and English just across the river, not a half mile away. Different world. Getting his bearings was like drinking water after a long run; it just felt good.
And the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the country's answer to the Smithsonian, was an easy walk from the motel, still on the Québec side of the river.
Okay. Time to reel in Dean from whatever plate of crèpes he'd found. He found his phone, dialed. Waited impatiently. Damn. Just voice mail. Yeah, I'll leave you message, asshole.
"I'm going to the Museum of Civilization. I'll meet you there at noon, in the cafeteria."
He was sweating by the time he got to the museum, walking along the breezy riverside path. High above the bluffs on the south bank of the river, the neo-gothic Parliament presided ominously over the land to the north. The museum wasn't difficult to find: directly across from Parliament in a sinuous twisting series of buildings with dull copper domes and buff colored sandstone, the museum looked as though aliens had been involved in the design. Organic and confusing and chaotic, a direct architectural counterpoint to the ordered, staid houses of law.
The building was illogical in the extreme and it took Sam a number of minutes to find the main entrance, but once inside, he easily located a floor plan printed in five different languages, and Sam – if he hadn't been so particularly worried – would have been content. Pleased. He loved museums. It was busy, though, thronging with crowds, dense packs of feral Japanese tourists and yapping strings of yellow-vested summer camp children hanging onto guide ropes as though they'd float away on the crowd if they let go. All sorts of languages ranged around him, rich and liquid as honey on a hot day.
After getting his entrance stamp, Sam made his way to the temporary exhibits on the main level, where the desk clerk had said the Treasures of Lithuania show was. He had to pay an extra ten dollars for that. Dean would freak.
He waited in another line to get into the exhibition itself; surrounded by French, he listened for anything that sounded like the more familiar Spanish, clutching for words and meaning with the same trepidation and excitement as the children in the lobby had their rope. No luck. Written text, he had a fighting chance, but this oral tumbling act? No way.
Once inside the exhibition space, the first thing Sam saw was the tree, hung with dark ribbons.
Stunned, he pushed his way through the crowd, eyes accepting the vision as true, mind seeking out an explanation for why the tree from his dreams was suddenly in the center of a traveling exhibition from the Lithuanian National Museum. Found an explanation in his usual comfort zone: ordered rows of text, silk-screened on the wall behind the tree.
Nothing he didn't already half-suspect: this was no ordinary tree, and these were no spring ribbons, tied like those around a Maypole, though they might be related. These ribbons were strands of human flesh, left in supplication and sacrifice to a god older than time, to the one authority that mattered.
The forest was the heart of all that was wild, the staging ground of any hunt, and the bison owned that real estate in the most essential way possible.
--
Dean thought his situation was kinda funny in one of those 'this only ever happens to me' ways: stuck in Céline Dion's costume wardrobe in the change area under the stage of the Cirque du Soleil's production of Inferno, about ten feet away from where La Céline was arguing with her husband about something he couldn't follow. He was completely naked and his ass was getting mauled into hamburger by some tenacious sequins. And he just didn't care.
"Ow," Dean moaned softly, trying to slide back a little, to see if the hard metal box he was perched on had any give whatsoever. None. Okay. How to play it then? He adjusted his weight so his bare shoulder blades pressed against the wall, lifting Béatrice's light-boned body as he did so. Shifted just enough so he was no longer in contact with the spray of sequins, of the fucking, idiotic sequins, that were scraping a bloody trench across his ass.
The closet wasn't big, even though it held a lot of shit. A lot of shit like sequined fucking dresses and high heeled shoes and steel hatboxes and god alone knew what else.
He balanced there for a moment, feet on the floor, arms busy with her, shoulders taking most of his weight, the sequined fabric swinging free from the hanger and landing on the floor of the closet. He was happily wondering how this was going to work when Béatrice compensated for his shift and leaned into him for a brief moment, smelled sharply of oysters and fresh bread, both of which combined to make Dean think of a bakery by the sea, but then that too slipped away and he tasted salt on his lips where they touched her. Man, it was hot in here.
Béa put both feet on the surface just below where his shoulder blades rested, her back against the facing wall, bent almost double, no weight on him whatsoever. Felt her exhalation of laughter, perhaps imagining his face, which she wouldn't be able to see in the dusty blackness, thick with smells of them, and worn clothing and waxy grease.
She'd picked up on the fourth ring, invited him to meet her at the theatre, that she'd give him a backstage tour, the shorthand for which kept Dean stimulated to near-distraction on the drive over. The theatre had been empty at that early hour, everyone still sleeping, Béatrice had informed him, grinning, tour guide-like. She'd shown him the stage, and then the trap door under it, explained how Céline changed under there so she could pop up in a different outfit. Lifted a slender dark brow as she'd said it, grinning. Like one of those whack-a-moles, Dean had replied, laughing, but she didn't understand the reference. Prettier in the light, Dean had thought.
Her tour of the understage had ended when agitated voices had surprised them: Céline and that horrible man, she'd hissed, genuine fear crossing her dark eyes. Enough time to shrug. He wasn't afraid of Céline Dion, but Béatrice sure was. Her husband more than her, she'd explained and pulled him into the cupboard, a confined space that had only hastened the inevitable.
So Céline and her husband talked – sometimes softly, but sometimes the voice that sank the really big ship rose threateningly. Theatrically. The man's voice was quieter, but not soft. And Dean didn't give a shit that one of the biggest divas in the known universe was having a hissy fit at her husband mere feet away, because Béa's mouth was in the spot where his jaw curved into ear and she whispered, "Some contortionists can bend so they fit into small boxes."
"You know," as he discovered that this new position permitted him just enough angle for a little needed leverage, "I think you're doing just fine in the bendy department."
"Really?" but the one word was unsteady, a result of the achieved leverage and all that it entailed.
They kept quiet out of need, this time. The voices were a bit fainter, but still audible from the costume storage cupboard, the conversation quick and dense. Béa suddenly put fingers to his mouth and he supposed she might get in trouble for bringing him here, and he cared about that, about getting her in trouble. He didn't care about what was happening beyond the cupboard, not anywhere. He was busy and it was important.
It felt important. Don't think about it, don't think – and swept his tongue down the length of her neck as she held still, like a pulled bowstring is still.
Above their heads, suddenly, a tattoo of quick beats, bare feet running staccato followed by a sailing leap of hollow noiselessness. Like holding a breath and Dean found he was holding a breath, but that might have more to do with Béa's own ideas about angles and converging areas of thrust. The sudden thud of feet landing meant he could breathe again, had to. The gymnasts practicing, Dean thought.
Pushed her hair away in the dark, wished he could see her face. His own heart thudding in syncopated rhythm to the gymnasts overhead, to the rhythm their bodies were finding together but mostly just in rhythm with her, which felt perfect and right and true. Not often, this. Not for him.
Full out arguing now from the other side of the panel, in French. Oh, thank god he had no idea what they were saying, because then he'd have to listen, and that was the last thing he felt like doing when he was moving inside her and Béa's silence was so tenuous, so hard won. That hit him mercilessly – she's holding back and everything in him suddenly wanted her in her entirety, no holds barred. It aroused him almost more than anything else: the wide range of truly weird noises women made while fucking. And Béa holding back on that front was almost more than he could stand.
In fact, he couldn't stand it, he felt his knees buckle, and Béa pressed herself to him, her long sinuous arms holding him up, feet sliding down suddenly, and neither cared about what the sequins were doing to them or what they were doing to the sequins, but they were on the floor now, tangled as dense brush, and Dean found both an angle and his motivation and so did she.
All of it without one sound, only his breath and hers and the relentless pounding of his heart, all of it rushing towards the leap like the staccato running footsteps above – dum dum dumdumdumdumdum -- and hollow endless release. Oblivion, like running full tilt at certain disaster, throwing yourself off a blinding, blessed cliff, thinking that's it, I'm dying.
And, not. Just...not.
Being more alive than you could possibly measure with compass and slide rule and weights and electricity. Humming with life like a live wire, like a shell held to the ear, the rush of water under spring ice. His sweat-slicked head dropped to her shoulder, and she pulled him into a hard embrace.
It took Dean a long time to come back; he was undone in the same way as a theatre seamstress might cut apart a costume for alterations, seams gone, formless. Felt like he might have to gather his strewn parts, scattered haphazardly in the closet along with the feathered headdresses and platform boots. Oh god, he whispered, brushed the side of Béa's temple with his lips and wrapped his arms around her, holding her together, afraid both of them might fall apart.
Béa hadn't come with him, not this time. She was quiet in his arms, but alert, every muscle tense. Listening. Fuck. He touched her face with the back of his fingers and she took his hand in hers, but the gesture was absent. She lifted her fingers to his lips. Hush. She was listening and now that he was in a position to properly take it in, he noticed something else. She was shaking.
--
His shivering wasn't helped by the fact that the museum's air conditioning was cranked beyond any reasonable human tolerance for temperature extremes. Jesus, did everyone in Canada like it cold, just on principle? Given how warm the day had been outside, he hadn't brought a button up shirt and now he wished he had, so he'd have something to disguise the gooseflesh on his arms and the shivering.
The exhibition covered thousands of years of Lithuanian pre-history and history, from the Sarmatian horse lords to annexation by Nazi Germany. The Lithuanian forests were fabled for their density and their wildness and their bison, had attracted hunters from Russian tsars to Hermann Göring. They had come to hunt elk and deer and lynx. But especially the timid, violent bison, no wild ox, nothing remotely domestic about it. Famed for the smoky taste of its meat, for the width between its horns, its shaggy fur and noble disposition.
Sam now sat in the museum's cafeteria, a large freshly brewed coffee steaming into the mechanically cooled air, a pen resting comfortably in his grip, other hand wrapped in his hair, sharing a long table with an assortment of tourists and schoolgirls. He examined the thumbnail sketches he'd made in his notebook: marginalia from medieval manuscripts, gold jewelry in the shape of bison heads, cauldrons beaten with elk patterns. The bison lived in the deepest recesses of the largest forest in Europe, and they had been hunted to near extinction by the end of the First World War, eaten by starving Russian and German troops, their natural habitat decimated by war and idiotic forestry management strategies.
But before, for millennia before, it had been different. A reclusive beast, the essence of everything terrible and unknown. He'd written phrases and single words, some underlined: 'living heart of the forest', 'gatekeeper', and 'forbidden'. Secret and powerful and venerated. Girls and young men given to the forest gods, their skins removed and hung from trees to permit hunting and forestry; to ask permission and to give recompense for trespass.
This was out of their league. The usual find evil ghost/spirit/creature, kill evil ghost/spirit/creature wasn't going to apply. This was old, this was myth. How the fuck do you kill a myth and a dream? Salt and a shotgun? Sam didn't even know if they were supposed to fight it.
The tree; that had been the worst. Sam had come back to it, sketched it, taken down the text word for word. A willing sacrifice to keep the beast at bay, to honor the ancient. What did that have to do with a demon, a presence of evil? What did it have to do with a trickster, he thought with a grimace. This bison thing is older than those things, more elemental. No rules, really. Just lay down your life and we'll all be fine. Thought about his dream: running with them, and falling. Another kind of death.
Back to the dream; trust the dream. Think. The bison is between me and the demon's fire. Protecting? He wrote it down, circled it a few times as though that clarified things.
A willing sacrifice. He shook his head, not trusting those two words, too easily manipulated by others. What about those kids in the apple orchard with the Vanir? Yeah, that had been all about a 'willing' sacrifice. People doing the sacrificing usually liked to think the victim was willing. Hell of lot easier sleeping at night, thinking that.
Too simple, thinking the bison is my friend, Sam thought, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows at the Parliament Buildings across the river, clear in the bright summer day, admired the straight lines, the consistency of the architect's vision. You don't make friends with something like that. It doesn't protect you. I betcha those prehistoric Lithuanian youths didn't much like being trampled to death or skinned alive. His attention lingered on the clock tower. Then noticed the time. Twelve thirty.
What? Dean couldn't find the largest museum in Canada? Tapped his pen against the drawing of the tree. Fished around in his canvas bag for his phone. Left another terse message, heart hammering, knowing that grudges once started were like chewing gum swallowed when you were ten. They lasted, deep down.
As he snapped the phone shut, he noticed that the schoolgirls were watching him. They were in uniform, in their mid-teens, too much makeup and attitude. Hell, it was late July; what was school doing in session? Summer school, maybe? These are bad girls, part of him thought, the part that had been in close proximity to Dean for far too long. At his attention, they burst into laughter and French. He heard gar lédon, and chek moélédon again, and thought the village idiot would be able to figure it out.
"Oh my god," one said, hand covering her mouth. "Il me regarde. I totally veux demander son nom. De quoi?" To her friends' inaudible shriek: "Like you don't?"
Dear god, Sam thought, slamming his book shut and gathering his things. He'd been enjoying this coffee, if not his own dark thoughts.
He slung his bag over his shoulder as he walked back into a huge open space lined with northwest coast native houses, gathered that the girls weren't far behind him if the giggles were any indication. He hoped that they had a chaperone with them. This was ridiculous.
The museum was all curves, presented no corners and no ready references: it was easy to become lost. Sam glimpsed an elevator sign, blessedly universal, thought about maybe ducking into the men's room – but no, then he'd be trapped – and got turned around in a circular space with some other exhibition three stories above and a floor carved with unknown symbols. Where the hell was he? Some museum dreamland: he was about to consult the floor plan again, but saw something from the corner of his eye that left him reeling.
In the darkened exhibition hall just beyond a set of arches to his left, a cliff rose at least twenty feet from the carved floor. At the top, precipitous as a spilled drink at the edge of a countertop, a number of buffalo clustered, wide eyed, startled, edging towards sudden death.
He took one step towards it, then another.
If the girls had followed him into this darkened, quiet, deathly cold area, he didn't know it. What he did know was that there was a cliff and there were dark beasts and falling. A shattering image obliterated his vision: the sensation of leaping into unknown darkness, of faith, of just letting go. Ragged breathing and he pressed his fingertips to his temples, not willing it away this time. He had a duty to understand this, needed to understand this. So much depended on it, not the least of which was his brother's life. His own life, if it came to that.
Steeled himself, taking it on, picking up the dropped sword, forcing himself into the bloodied arena like a gladiator. A willing sacrifice, in its truest sense was not prey and was not a victim and Sam had never thought of himself as either of those things. Embraced it.
The falling was deliberate, wasn't the result of terror or mayhem. Was acceptance of a role, was submission to a greater whole. Was the way of things. Sam understood all this in a heartbeat, even as the ground rushed up to meet him.
His head snapped up, breathing hard, head pounding with blood, every tiny nerve throbbing. He looked wildly around: this part of the museum was empty for the moment; no one had heard whatever noise he'd probably made. The noise that someone makes when it feels as though their head's being split in two. Then, like a blast of winter air coming through an open door, Sam was gifted with a clear head, almost minty, no pain whatsoever. Whatever the vision was, it was gone now and he adjusted the sit of his bag's strap, gave his hands something to do other than to nervously rake through his hair.
As an enthusiastic tour guide herded her group into the exhibition space, Sam sidled closer to the cliff's base. It took a second to understand that this was a diorama, a detailed exercise in fakery. The buffalo were real enough: really dead. Didn't matter if they fell off the cliff or not. It was weird just looking at them, because your heart yearned for them to take a step back, but they were already gone.
Sam remembered a social studies unit in elementary school: before the introduction of horses and guns, early native people on the American plains used cliffs to make large buffalo kills. Let this fact surface, then tested his knowledge against the exhibition label.
A recreation of Head-Smashed-in-Buffalo-Jump in southern Alberta. World heritage site, large photos of sweeping land, mottled with cloud shadows, high cliffs signaling the beginning of a more mountainous region. Not the dark forests of Lithuanian, but a wild magic place all the same. Home to Napi, the Blood and Peigan peoples, Blackfoot territory. Those that made restitution prior to the hunt, asking the buffalo to permit themselves to be hunted.
The buffalo is the one who does the choosing, Sam thought, gripping that fact like the hilt of a weapon, though he was unsure how to use it.
--
TBC
a/n: Okay, what's on my bookshelf this time, you're wondering. Or not. I'm going to tell you anyway, so humour me, okay? So much of my understanding of cultural objects, history and myth comes from Simon Schama, who is a fine academic who bears a really uncanny resemblance to my husband, which make both of them sexier, quite frankly. The place of the bison in the cultural psyche of Lithuanians is all from him (and indirectly, from Guy Gavriel Kay, but that's another story), though the Blackfoot stuff is from Head-Smashed-in-Buffalo-Jump, which is a truly amazing site that you should visit at least once in your lifetime. Utterly magical. Go and feel like a tiny, insignificant yet integral part of the universe.
If I ever want to see bilingualism in action, I listen to the uniformed schoolgirls having lunch in the Canadian Museum of Civilization's cafeteria. It's magical in a different way. But those girls? They scare me.
I'm off on holidays, trying to update when I can, darlings, so please bear with me!
