The Air Show – 1995
Dayton International Airport, July, 1995
Four of the Navy’s F13F Tomcats passed above her. The Blue Angels were popular with air show crowds, and Dayton proved to be no exception. She smiled; almost three thousand years and she hadn’t lost her touch. Not that she was really trying. Her red hair would stand out in any crowd, and from a distance she was still a very attractive woman. With her eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, she was attractive up close as well.
Unless they looked at her feet. Another smile – her taste in shoes had always ran to the practical, and today was no exception. Dayton International was not an airport with a large traffic volume on a good day, and with United closing their hub, traffic had gotten smaller still. Some runways, like this one, were only used to park the less interesting aircraft during the Air Show.
As always, the Air Force was the centerpiece. Four B-70s had been sent to represent SAC. There was always a crowd of children around them – hoping for patches from their crews or pictures next to the nose art. Several years before some enterprising souls had erected a grandstand for that purpose. Now one was standard issue whenever SAC aircraft went on a public relations tour. NORAD had sent a sleek fighter or two, hoping to make inroads on the Air Force-SAC connection in children’s minds.
The Air Force had also sent one of their C-150 transport planes along. It was easier to fly in a public relations team with the necessary equipment than to trust to whatever the locals thought the Air Force needed. While impressive aircraft to aeronautical engineers, few people bought tickets to see a trash hauler. So they were relegated to the fringes of the static display area. That kept them out of the way, and gave the few people who walked over to them an excellent view of the aerial acrobatics.
That is where he would be.
He was. Seated on the air intake of one of the massive jet engines was a young man. He wore a striped blue polo shirt and khaki shorts, his skin slightly dark and olive, his brownish blond hair cut short and gelled in the way that was becoming popular with youth again. He always did pick up on local fashion trends. He wore sunglasses, thin ones with black metal frames. He looked, at most, twenty-five.
Only his eyes gave away his true age. They were the color of jade, as alive as hers were dead. Gold ringed his pupils and spread out into the iris. They were the eyes that many men expected her to have, and in her pettier moments, eyes she had envied. Until she had seen the pain in them; it was the pain that made his eyes attractive.
“Hello.”
He looked away. “Oh, hello.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Yes, it has.”
“Oh, relax. I’m not here to kill you.”
“I didn’t think so.” He laughed. “Is she still angry?”
“No. She never really was. She knows you were a child; and children heal as well as demons. Probably more if they’re demonic children. She is human, though, and bound to be jealous of you from time to time.”
“Are you?”
“I am of your eyes.”
“Trade them for your red hair.”
“You don’t need my red hair – you get into enough more than enough trouble as it is.”
He chuckled.
“No, she wasn’t angry about you not being as scarred as she is. She was just angry, and angry people say things they don’t really mean. And you know she wouldn’t really wish that scarring on someone she liked, would she?” She still knew how to put a mother’s steel into her voice.
He looked sheepish. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t you ma’am me. You’re as bad as Loki is sometimes, not thinking. You of all people should realize why she was furious with you.”
“Oh?”
“They’re not exactly kind to her, are they?”
“Well, she’s not alone. They say some rather unpleasant things about me. I could use the tail, though.” He gave her a very mischievous grin.
“You’re incorrigible. You definitely do not need my red hair.” Another chuckle; he always tried to worm his way out with humor. “You realize that running off to study Christianity and Judaism was rather likely to infuriate her?”
“Oh. Did it bother you?”
“Not really. I found the idea of a pagan god turned Christian theologian and Talmudic scholar amusing. Besides, the Seer is right. He explained it to Lillith once she’d calmed down enough to think. Anyone who loved puzzles as much as you do couldn’t resist the greatest puzzle of all. Given how delighted you were to write riddles for us at Delphi, she should have known that.”
The intake spun gently as the Pizza Dacha Sukhoi Squadron took to the air and the crowd cheered. She looked nervous.
“Relax. It’s just the wind. Annabelle won’t hurt you, or me.”
“Annabelle?”
“Yes. I asked. It’s not just SAC’s bombers that talk to people. She’s a very nice aircraft, though rather lonely. Nobody talks to her”
“You would know.”
“Not really. Balloons don’t tend to talk.”
“Would Annabelle mind if I joined you?” She’d seen far stranger things than talking airplanes.
He was quiet for a moment, and then slid over to one side. “No, she’d like the company.”
“Thank you, Annabelle. Besides, my feet hurt. And I’m wearing flats. We seem to have lost the ability to make a woman’s shoe that isn’t designed for a masochist.” She sat down beside him. To the distant observer, they looked like lovers; nobody would disturb them. She laughed at the irony.
“Orange?”
“Please.” Even after all the years, fresh fruit was still a delicacy to her. Old habits died hard.
She took a fresh orange from the cooler and unwrapped it from the paper towel before handing him back the cooler. As he put the cooler back on the tarmac with his left hand, she grabbed his right.
“Where did you get that scar?”
“Which one?”
“The one across the palm. Your palms and face were the one of the few places above your waist you didn’t get burned or cut up. I would know.” Those scars were how they had met; she the priestess at Delphi, he a young chariot thief brought to her to be healed. “Küstrin?”
“No, that left no scars.” Not that anyone could see, anyway.
She hugged him; some lessons were harder to learn than others. Few demons realized how painful it was to love short-lifers until they did. And lost them.
“Did the Seer destroy that hateful place?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” His voice was cold.
“Is that why you and Loki keep giggling every time the two of you are together?”
“No. There is not much about Küstrin to laugh at. For either one of us. That’s part of why he and the Seer fight so much – Loki never understood why he left me there.”
“We thought you were still in Poland.”
“Keeping track of me?”
“Anyone who knew you would know where you are. Who else would propose a heliocentric universe based on scientific reasoning and theology? I think Lillith still has a copy, somewhere. She was rather proud of you for that.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think. You couldn’t have known I was there, and you couldn’t come get me even if you knew. Too risky.”
She nodded. There wasn’t much she could say, so she kept quiet.
“Besides, he’d changed. Voltaire saw it, Loki saw it. That’s why I left.”
“Paris?”
“Yes. How could I resist the Enlightenment? Or the balloons? They were flying.” Demons rarely put that awe in their voice.
“Are you still wearing the glasses Ben gave you?”
“Well, no. I lost those at Magenta.”
“Ballooning?”
“No. It was the ground that was dangerous.”
“So why do the two of you laugh every time you’re together?”
“Hermes Trismegistus. I asked Nefertiti to help me make something up for the Romans. You know how they took every deity they could get their hands on and built something to them. And I was bored. Well, I hung on to the manuscripts, and showed them to Loki after he challenged me to a practical joke contest.”
“He challenged you to a practical joke contest?”
“Yes.”
“Do I want to know what he did?”
“Probably not. I slowly started giving copies out to Renaissance intellectuals, and they believed it. Bruno even wanted to replace Christianity with it, and Newton . . . Newton . . . ”
“You mean modern science is based on your joke?”
“Modern physics, anyway. He actually thought the inverse-square law was divinely revealed to him, Moses, and Hermes Trismegistus.”
“Dear Astarte, I’m not sure which one of you is worse! How did we ever survive?”
“Me?!?” He rolled his eyes. “You’re just as bad. Almost a thousand years as a Byzantine Court Princess.”
“It kept me sharp. Those Byzantines could teach my grandchildren a thing or two. They’re rather . . . inventive.”
“The pit of scorpions again?”
“Nothing that passé. I was never a deity.”
“That was your fault. You’re the one who poisoned the Pythia.”
“She was in the way. And the Oracle was fun.”
“And those riddles of mine you let loose?”
“Somebody had to pay to put you back together. Those riddles made for a very nice living for all of us. It’s not my fault the people who came to Delphi could use a little shearing.”
He cocked his head. “Like the South Seas Bubble?”
“Yes. They were a flock that needed a lot of shearing. And you’re still avoiding the question.”
“Which question?”
“Where you got that scar.”
“Oh. I never could fool you, could I?”
“I’ve had children; I’m immune.”
His voice grew soft. “Kristallnacht.”
“Why did you go back?”
“Gliding. It was the closest to flying I was going to get. Branwen and Loki warned me not to, that I couldn’t blend in. I didn’t listen.
They burned my books. My Torah, my Aquinas and Augustine, the notes on alchemy, my Encyclopedia, Voltaire, nine hundred years of Talmudic Law. Leo’s sketches – he designed that helicopter for me. Several of Ben’s Almanacs, everything! A thousand years of knowledge, a thousand years and they sent it up in smoke outside my apartment.
They burned my books.”
There was nothing to say; there was nothing to do, either. Those men and women were long dead. She just put her arm around his shoulder.
“Loki saved my Gutenberg Bible. Most of it.”
“And you.”
“And me. He still has it.”
“The Bible?”
“Yes. I might want it back some day.”
“You will.”
“Lets talk of something else.”
“All right.” The crowd grew quiet as one of the Pizza Dachas climbed out of the formation, the hole a tribute to the dead.
She waited until they landed. “When do the hyacinth bloom?”
“Early spring. I want to go back to Delphi for it. He always liked those.”
“I’ll go with you. It’s about as close as I can get, considering . . .” Canaan wasn’t exactly accessible anymore.
“Why the sudden interest?”
“You might be too busy to go any other way.”
He turned to look her in the eye. “I will?”
“Yes. Phaeton Phoebus Apollo, how high do you want to fly?”