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“Oh, my God!” I cried while Messenger stared in confusion at the mess. I grabbed a paper towel meaning instinctively to wipe the mess, then realized that would be a mistake, and handed him the paper towel, which he used to make matters quite a bit worse by smearing the jelly and milk down his front and into the buttonholes.
“This is regrettable,” he said, and I believe he may have experienced the normal human reaction of feeling embarrassed.
“Oh,” I said. “You know what? You can actually go backward in time and avoid the spill.” I was feeling proud of myself for that clever insight.
He shook his head. “Time travel does not change future events. And we are not given the power in order to take personal advantage.”
“Do you have a spare shirt?”
He winced. “Not at the moment. My laundry is taken away and returned after a few days.”
I couldn’t help it: I laughed. I tried not to, but how could I not laugh at the notion that the most powerful person I had ever met or imagined meeting, the dread Messenger of Fear, had not kept up on his laundry. The mere fact that he had laundry seemed incongruous.
Messenger had been for me an object of mystery, anger, fear, and yes, desire, as Oriax had immediately seen. But he was still a boy. He was a boy with a ruined shirt and no spares available.
“Give it to me,” I said, “I can rinse it out in the sink.”
Messenger looked at me, down at his shirt, at me again, and said, “Um . . .” Which was the second strangest thing I’d heard him say in the last couple of minutes.
“Just . . . really. And I can dry it with my blow-dryer.”
He stood, indecisive—not an emotion I connect with Messenger—so I said, “Come on,” in a “no big deal” voice.
So he shrugged off the long coat he always wore and laid it over the back of a stool. Then, “My body. . .”
“Messenger, I know about the tattoos. I have one myself and will soon have more. I promise I won’t be horrified.”
It was a promise I could make, but not one I could keep.
He unbuttoned his shirt, including the ones at his wrists. Then, removed it and laid it on the stool closer to me.
I didn’t mean to stare. But how could I not?
His bare flesh was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting of hell. Each terrible punishment inflicted during his time as a Messenger of Fear was there on him in terribly vivid tattoos, tattoos not limited to the usual colors, not limited by the boundaries of decency. Many of them moved so that rather than just being a painting, he was like hundreds of small screens, each showing a scene of terror to sicken the mind. The tattoos almost seemed at times to jostle for position, wishing to be seen, as though each was pushing its way through a crowd of other sufferers to cry, “Look at me, see what I endured.”
He was watching me as I looked at his chest and shoulders and biceps. I felt ashamed, as though I was violating his privacy.
I took his shirt and brought it to the sink. I filled the sink with soapy water and plunged the shirt in. “I’ll let it soak for a minute. If you want, I could get you one of my T-shirts. It would be pretty small on you.”
I forced myself to turn back to him, I forced myself to look in his eyes and not at the tableau. When, inevitably, I glanced down, I struggled to ignore the tattoos and focus instead on the shape of him, on the very human shape of hard, flat stomach, of capable muscles and strong bones beneath. I imagined him without the marks of his office. I imagined I was looking at the most beautiful boy I’d ever known, stripped to the waist.
But then, I saw her.
She had long, auburn hair, shampoo commercial hair. Her face . . . and here I have to pause to control my wild emotions . . . her face was lovely.
But that beauty was fleeting, for the beauty was slowly devoured by a creeping rash, followed by boils and pustules that oozed blood and a clear, viscous fluid. As this disease or curse advanced, she—the tattoo—screamed silently, face all open mouth and wild eyes.
The auburn hair. The lovely face. I had had hints of them before. But it was the location of this tattoo that told the story, for it was directly over his heart.
I didn’t mean to say it, I knew that it would cause him pain, and I knew that I was seeing more than he wished to reveal about himself. But how could I not put a name to that terrible image? How could I keep from whispering . . .
“Ariadne.”
8
ARIADNE. MESSENGER’S LOST LOVE.
Ariadne, who he searched for anywhere and everywhere.
