The Demon’s Cantos
Part 21
Byron woke with the sun, though not entirely by choice.
Faustus prodded him gently and when Byron did not immediately wake the giant spider put his impressive acrobatic skills on display and hopped up onto the bed, landing heavily on Byron’s torso.
Byron’s tired eyes snapped open and the half-asleep vision of Faustus’s eyeballed face sent a panicked yell across the length of the house, followed by the soft thud of Byron leaping out of bed as though it were on fire and hitting the floor in a jumble.
Faustus looked down quizzically from the over the edge of the mattress and cocked his head to the side, as though to say “good morning?”
Byron blinked up, terror quickly morphing into annoyance. “I’m awake!” He shook his head and leaned back into the clump of blankets that had followed him to the ground, running the fingers of his right hand through his relaxation motions, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.
Faustus extended his remaining front leg and gently prodded Byron in the belly.
Byron sighed and looked more calmly at the spider, “I’m awake, Faustus. I’ll be right there.”
Satisfied, Faustus jumped down from the bed and click-clacked across the white floor and out of the room.
Byron watched him go and then rubbed at the grogginess in his eyes. It occurred to him that he had no idea how long he’d been asleep. He’d assumed that the day/night cycle was the same on the island as it was on Ocracoke. But laying there on the floor he realized that was anything but assured. In fact, thinking on it, he was not at all certain the star lighting the island was even the Sun.
Shaking his head, Byron added this to his mental list of questions and readied himself for breakfast.
Ten minutes later he was sitting at the kitchen island as Tilda fried up a couple of eggs and links of sausage. She toasted a halved brioche bun and had laid out a pat of soft butter in a tiny plate alongside some raspberry jam. Her mood seemed much improved from last night, and neither she nor Byron was inclined to bring up the exchange.
As she tipped the skillet over towards a large white plate two perfectly cooked eggs and aromatic sausage slipped out.
Byron eyed the sausage and the bread. He’d looked through the refrigerator and some of the cupboards the night before after Tilda went to bed, for a late night snack and hadn’t seen any sausage or the brioche buns. “Where are you getting all this food?” Byron asked.
Tilda’s face was even, her eyes gentle again – neither filled with determination or pathos. “The house provides,” Tilda answered, “sometimes it seems to know what I want before I do.”
Tilda slid the plate of food toward Byron who didn’t hesitate to dive in with aplomb. After a couple of savory bites, while eagerly spreading butter on his brioche, Byron spoke through a mouthful of sausage. “It’s such a strange house, almost like its alive.”
Tilda went over to the fridge and removed a large grapefruit from inside. She cut it in half and arranged it in a small bowl, sprinkling sugar from a white porcelain cup onto the surface with a tiny spoon. “Oh it is alive – I mean, in all the ways that matter. You can’t literally have a conversation with it,” Tilda said, sitting down across from Byron and cutting out a section of grapefruit with her spoon, “but it has a mind of its own – a kind of soul.”
Byron looked up from his plate of breakfast and eyed the walls and ceiling suspiciously. “How is that possible?”
Tilda pointed across the room at the coffee table and Byron followed her finger with his eyes to the Cantos gleaming there.
Byron scoffed. “How does being able to burn things or making a rock heavier,” he began, making a broad gesture toward the house, “turn into this? I thought you said the Cantos wasn’t magic – yet here we are eating breakfast in a living house,” Byron laughed, picked up his buttered brioche and held it up toward Tilda, “eating magic bread!”
Tilda swallowed a spoonful of grapefruit. “There’s a difference between something magical and magic, Byron. The power of the Cantos is unbelievable and it allows magical things to happen, like this house or, I don’t know,” she gave Byron a mischievous look, “teleporting a giant octopus halfway across the galaxy into your grandma’s kitchen.”
Byron chuckled and took a bite of the brioche. The bread was stupendous with the jam and butter. Byron raised the bread up toward the ceiling, “compliments to the chef,” he said jokingly. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the ceiling seemed to glow a little brighter for just a moment in the sunlight.
Tilda continued, “But just because something is magical, doesn’t mean it’s magic. The Cantos doesn’t actually break any rules of nature. Its power is limited by those rules. What the Cantos does, for a Master Cantor, is allow total control, total manipulation.”
Byron was dubious. “OK, so then where did the Brioche come from?” Byron speared a link of sausage and held it up, “or the meat?”
Tilda shrugged, “I don’t know. I didn’t build the place. Maybe it harvests atoms from the air. Or maybe it opens a portal to another dimension filled with sausage and bread.”
Byron rolled his eyes, “if you don’t want to talk about this you can just say so,”
Tilda leaned forward, slightly confused, “I’m serious. I don’t know where it comes from, but those are both realistic possibilities.”
“Sure,” Byron said, turning back to his eggs, a little annoyed, “as realistic as a living house I guess.”
“Right. Exactly.” Tilda raised her eyebrows challengingly, putting her spoon down on the counter loudly so Byron looked up. “The Universe is a big place Byron, and the Multiverse is even bigger. Infinite infinities. Whose to say there isn’t a planet somewhere out there populated with walking, talking houses? Or a nebula of sausages?”
“I don’t know, common sense? Physics?”
“What physical rule says there can’t be a brioche asteroid?” Tilda touched the countertop and Byron watched as the stone – the house – responded, glowing a warm orange in the shape of her hand. “Don’t mistake the extremely unlikely for the impossible.”
“I guess,” Byron said, a shiver running up his back.
Tilda lifted her hand from the counter-top and the impression of her palm and fingers continued to glow brightly, slowly fading back to the white marble.
“We’re all particles and waves Byron – me, you, this place,” she pointed toward the toasted bread with her spoon, “that brioche. It’s all the same stuff – all of it – energy, never destroyed, never created, just shifting and shifting.”
Tilda paused and seemed to remember something.
“They showed me once, just a glimpse, of things as they really are.” Tilda took on a strange look, distant but warm, consoled and distressed at the same time, “ Mary called it the ‘bird’s eye view.’” Tilda shut her eyes and spoke as if from inside a dream. “That’s what really changed me, what let me leave the past behind.” Tilda took a gentle breath, long and reverent, opened her eyes and looked at Byron through a veil of calm.
Byron grew silent, trying to imagine what Tilda could possibly be talking about. “I’m not sure I understand – what did you see?”
Now it was Tilda’s turn to chuckle. She considered for a moment how to answer and settled on the word “Everything.” Then after a moment, she turned her attention back to her grapefruit, scooping contentedly at another sugar-coated section.
“There’s no explaining it Byron, you’ve either seen it or you haven’t.” As she raised a small spoonful of citrus to her mouth, Tilda shot Byron a knowing glance. “But take my word for it, there’s nothing weird about a living house, or a portal to a sausage planet, or a comet made of French bread. Honestly, it’s all so big,” she said, shaking her head in residual amazement, “it would be far, far stranger if any of those things didn’t exist.”
Byron blinked, uncertain what to say. Instead, he said nothing and watched Tilda eat her grapefruit, savoring every bite.
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