The God Who Stood Alone

“Get out.”
Amadeus growled the words through his teeth, leaning on the drivers side door. He had swung it open, and then leaned down slightly, one hand bracing himself against the roof of the vehicle. The door was cold, even through the heavy material of his shirt, but the black-painted roof of the car was warm under the palm of his hand. At the tone of his voice, he saw the girl's eyes widen; a mixture of shock and fright shooting through their off-green sapphire depths. In the shadow of the car, they seemed more gray-green than their natural blue.
“Get out.” Amadeus repeated, jerking his head toward the door. “You win.”
“I...” the girl swallowed once, and then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I win.” she turned her eyes away toward the windshield, clouded with thought, and then snapped them back to his. “No.”
“No?”
“No.” she repeated. “You never admit defeat. There's something that you're not telling me. What is it?”
“You're driving.”
He said the words plainly, but he instantly saw the impact they made on the young girl. Her eyes widened until they were two blue suns shining from her face, and her lips curved into a crescent of the moon, splitting apart to reveal two sets of brilliant white teeth. Turning, she pulled on the door handle, and Amadeus heard it click as she crawled out into the afternoon sunlight. The girl straightened, and then walked around the front of the car to where he stood. He stepped back, gesturing to the driver's seat. The girl hesitated, one hand resting on the hood of the car. Her breathing was light, quick, and delighted. Then she came around the edge of the door, and folded herself into the drivers seat. Both hands traced the top of the wheel, her thumbs bouncing slightly as they caught the ridges in the thick leather. Turning her face upward, narrowing her eyes as they caught the sun, she looked him in the eyes.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” he nodded. “It's time you learned, anyway. Mom and dad sure 'aint gonna teach you, so...”
“But...” she hesitated slightly, “the police?”
“We'll switch when we get into town. It's ten minutes of country driving from here to there, if we take the back roads. Keep it straight and you'll be fine. Besides, if a cop catches us, I'll just voodoo-mind-power him into submission, right?”
The girl grinned, and then reached out to pull her door closed. Just before her face disappeared behind the darkened glass, he saw the smile plastered onto her normally serene porcelain face.
“Get in, loser!” she laughed.
Feeling a slight grin tugging at the edges of his lips, Amadeus walked quickly around the tailgate of the car. As he was reaching for the door handle, he heard the cars engine pick up from neutral into drive, the soft rumble becoming a deep humming sound – like a thousand bees trapped in a metal jar. Pulling the door open, he fell into the passenger seat and glanced over at the driver. She was busy adjusting the mirrors and seat, the gears whirring softly as it moved forwards and clicked into place. She reached up one hand, the sunlight catching the thin silver-link bracelet on her wrist, and twisted the mirror until she could see out of the back of the vehicle easily. Breathing out, she returned both hands to the steering wheel and glanced over at him.
“Thank-you.” she murmured, the happiness in her voice almost solemn. There was a kind of respect there that he had never heard her give another person, and it brought a kind of heat to his chest that reminded him of rum.
“Don't mention it.” he said, reaching over and ruffling her hair gently. “Now, prove to me that I'm making the right decision.”
The reaction was instant. As though those words had been the trigger, and the car was the resulting explosion from the barrel. The girl pushed down on the gas pedal and rolled the steering wheel between both hands, carrying them around the first maple tree and weaving deftly around the second. Pausing for a brief moment at the end of the driveway, she clicked on her blinker and puled out onto the long, empty dirt road. Reaching over, Amadeus clicked a button on the dashboard and the windows rolled down. Air swept in, filling the car and causing the young girl's hair to fly wildly behind her, wrapping around the headrest and whipping at the soft leather. The grin on her face widened, and she pushed down slightly harder on the gas pedal. The trees turned to a blur around them, and they seemed to keep pace with the clouds above, stopping in their rolling crawl across the blue expanse of the sky. The girl whooped as they began to climb a hill. The sun was behind them, turning their mirrors to white fire as it reflected across the polished glass.
“You're fast!” Amadeus grinned.
“There's no one on the roads,” Calypso called over the sound of the wind. “Besides, we're about to hit a hill! We'll slow down there anyway.”
It was true, he saw. The road stretched out in front of them, a massive black line between the two bordering rows of golden maples and green oaks. It curved upward steeply, broken only by a driveway on the right-hand side disappearing back into the trees. With the wind streaming through the windows, making his eyes water, and the heat of the sun, he felt the way Icarus must have. A freedom so intense it almost burned. Glancing over at his sister, Amadeus could tell that she must feel the same way – except it would be better for her.
It amazed him, really: that such a young girl could be so nobly proud, and yet so happily childish. He caught a glimpse of both of those as her eyes left the road briefly and flickered towards his face, her mouth curved into a fierce smile. Her hair, wrapped around the seat behind her, was littered with light, and her deep blue eyes glittered like polished sapphires.
“You've grown up, Calypso.” he whispered suddenly, overwhelmed with a wave of sadness; a kind of sadness which was laced by ribbons of pride, and happiness, and awe – but sadness nonetheless. Sadness for a childhood that the girl was never allowed to have, despite supposedly being given every chance. Sadness for a girl who had been forced to make herself something which was more than a woman.
“Nah.” she said, her fingers easing against the leather of the steering wheel.
She seemed to pick up on his sadness, her eyes going back to the road as a thoughtful look passed over her face. Then, risking one more quick glance over at him, she smiled.
“Remember when you taught me to ride a bike?” she asked.
Amadeus shook his head, a wry grin pushing its way onto his lips. It just seemed to happen to him around Calypso. There was no other choice. “You were terrible.” he chuckled, “I don't think there's a single thing in town without some kind of rubber mark on it.”
Calypso laughed, her voice so light it was almost lost in the wind. “Good thing I'm a better driver, huh?”
“Thank God.” Amadeus agreed. “Remember the first time you tried to ride without hands?” They were climbing the hill, now. He laughed as Calypso flinched involuntarily, narrowing her eyes and breathing out through her nose, her neck trying to draw back into her seat.
“Time I went over the handlebars onto Mr. Brewer's car, right?”
Amadeus laughed, nodding. “Yeah.”
“Figure I'm any better now?” the girl asked teasingly, easing her grip on the steering wheel.
One perfectly-painted white fingernail pulled up, and then the next. Amadeus watched as the young girl's hands slowly left the wheel, hanging in the air as if trying to steer with invisible strings. The car stayed straight, flying up the hill. Calypso kept her eyes pinned to the road, but her smile grew. Amadeus chuckled, placing one arm in the empty space where his window should have been, spreading his fingers so that he could feel the wind streaming through them. He turned his face away from the road, looking into the forest on his right-hand side, watching as the mighty oak trees flew by. They grew crooked out of the hill, seeming to reach higher and higher into the sky as they climbed. They had almost reached the peak of the hill when he glanced back to the road.
“Calypso!” he roared, lunging for the steering wheel, “Right!”
The last word had barely passed his lips when the hurtling shape came clear over the top of the hill. It flew low to the ground, almost invisible in the sunlight. The white paint was turned into a color which resembled the gold of the oak leaves, barely a break in the black pavement. Its windows were glowing with light, and Amadeus instantly knew that the driver would be almost blind – driving into the sunlight, down a ridge. He heard Calypso cry out in shock just as his fingers closed around the steering wheel, already spinning under Calypso's hands,and just in time to take most of their weight out of the middle of the road. Then the impact hit them.
It was a feeling somewhat like suspended motion; weightless, but weighing down on every part of his body as if he was made of lead. There was a throaty crunch, and then the world began to rotate. The same was the only thing that was not a blur as they spun across the pavement, and then struck something. Both passengers, neither in control, were thrown into the dashboard as their tail-end collided with something. There came the sound of shattering glass, and a burning sensation ripped up Amadeus' arm from elbow to the side of his wrist. His head collided with the dashboard, and the world flashed black for a second. When color came back, it was in a vivid explosion of light and noise. He was still in his seat; that was the first realization he had. Turning his head, he looked desperately for Calypso. She was also in her seat, one arm crooked over the steering wheel and her face buried in the curve of her arm. In front of them, the dashboard was buckled outward, curved in an almost dome-like shape. Turning quickly toward the back of the car, Amadeus instantly realized that the damage was much worse. If anyone had been sitting in the back, they would have been dead. The windshield was a shattered mass of white lines, spider-webbing out from whatever they had hit. One of the headrests was gone, the other was bent forward at an impossible angle. The sight disturbed Amadeus in some strange, deep-seated way, and he twisted back to the front quickly. Something was rising in Amadeus' chest; and he tried desperately to push it down. It was something that reminded him of a dragon; a mass of bristling spines and teeth, claws and anger – fire which heated his cheeks and singed his lips when he breathed out.
Pulling on the handle of his door and pushing outward, his arm bent. The door didn't move. Growling low in his throat, Amadeus twisted around so that he was lying sideways in his seat, raising one leg and giving the door a vicious kick. It cracked open, and he pushed it away with his arm as he crawled out into the afternoon sunlight. Glancing down, Amadeus saw the sunset bleeding out over his fingers, ruby droplets dripping from the nail of his middle finger and splashing into the crash. For some reason, they seemed important. Every time a droplet struck the ground, it seemed to crash in his ears. Kicking himself into motion, he stumbled around the front of the car toward the drivers' side door. Just as he was reaching for the handle, it opened with the sound of screeching metal and Calypso pulled herself out from the space inside.
For a brief moment, they made eye contact. There was something inside of the girl's eyes that reminded Amadeus of glass; fragile, smudged with fingerprints of what had happened – it was Elizabeth. For just a brief second, no more than a flash of light across the depth of her eyes, she was the other girl. And then Calypso was back. Her eyes were still glass, but now they looked like the back windshield; flexed, shattered, sharp, dangerous. The moment where Amadeus thought the crash might have wrecked something other than the car was gone.
“What did we hit?” Calypso asked, her voice deadly and elegant and adult.
“Another car.” Amadeus replied, leaning his uninjured arm against the windshield and resting on it heavily. The front light was cracked, but the hood seemed otherwise fine. The back of the car, it seemed, had taken most of the impact. He could feel blood soaking into the material of his coat, and saw Calypso's eyes move to his hand as another drop of blood rolled along the curve of his finger and fall to the pavement below.
“You're hurt!”
There was something about the young girl's voice that disturbed him. The way her eyes followed the drops of his blood that fell to the pavement, the way the ocean inside of them grew almost hungry. It was as if the car crash – while not breaking her – had turned the girl into something different. It was identical to the way he had felt when he had smashed his mirror; the destruction almost seductively beautiful. Below the horrified alarm in her voice, there was something deeper: excitement, mystery, violence. They struggled inside of the girl as she took his hand, twisting it around and pushing back his coat sleeve. Amadeus held her eyes for a moment, and then looked down.
“Hell.” she breathed.
“It's not deep.” he replied instantly, pulling his arm away and turning toward the road. “It can wait.”
The image of his arm flashed through his mind; a long streak of red against white flesh. It was deep, he knew. Deeper than he wanted to think about. He didn't know what could have caused it; his coat seemed perfectly fine. The cut, however, was not – ragged and thick with blood. He pushed himself off the hood of the car. His arm was numb, but throbbing steadily with pain. The thudding in his ears seemed to echo the crash of blood drops striking the pavement.
“We ...” he took a deep breath, and then called back to the girl where she stood beside the car, “... have to find ... the other ... person.”
She was past him immediately, as if fired from a cannon. She sprinted down the road, sundress flying in the wind as she ran, hair a wild tangle behind her. As she sprinted past him, for a brief moment, he caught the look on her face; grim determination, desperation, hope. She flew down the road, calling back to him as he slowed.
“Call someone! I'll see if they're alive!”
Alive, he thought. Not okay. Alive.
Stopping where he stood, one the crest of the hill, his feet spread over the white border line, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his cellphone. Clicking the call button, he quickly dialed '911' and tucked the phone between cheek and shoulder and he began walking to the side of the road and down the hill. The phone rang in his ear as he walked. Pulling up short, he finally saw the other vehicle. It was a wreck. It sat facing upward, the way it had come. The windshield was gone, only a few shards of glass sticking like sharpened fingers from the metal frame which had held them. The hood had been bent, wrenched at such an angle that it hung from the front of the vehicle like an awning above the asphalt. Amadeus took a deep breath. Calypso sat on the ground, beside a still figure. She was bent over him, her ear pressed to his chest.
Hello, 911. What is your emergency?
He watched as Calypso put her hand above the figure's mouth, waiting a few seconds and then sitting upright. She rocked back on her heels, raising her face to the sky as if in prayer. One of her hands found the figure's, and she held it as she sat.
“Hello.” Amadeus spoke into the phone, his voice calm and measured. “I'm on line 3 out of the city. There's been a crash on Ryer's Hill – we have one person unconscious, and one seriously injured.”
He was talking about himself, but as he spoke the words, an image of Calypso flashed through his mind. Her eyes afire with a lust for destruction. In that moment, he thought, she had reminded him terrifyingly of Laurence.
Redirecting you to paramedics. Please hold.
“Thank-you.” Amadeus breathed, hearing footsteps and shouting on the other end of the line. He jogged to Calypso, slowing as he reached the grass. The figure under her hands wore a crumpled brown coat, dark in some places with blood. There was a cut running across his forehead, wide but shallow. A line of blood crawled from the cut to his ear, wrapping the bottom and soaking into the grass. His face was calm, his mouth slightly open, his chest rising and falling as he breathed – slowly, so slowly. As soon as Amadeus caught sight of him, he froze.
Paramedics on route. Do not move or disturb the victims. Do not leave the scene. Do you hear me? Hello? Hello!
Amadeus let the phone fall from his ear, his arm lowering to his side. Calypso was looking up at him from where she sat in the grass, a strange look passing through her gray-blue eyes.
It was the boy, Amadeus knew immediately. As soon as his eyes fell on him, he recognize the figure.
It was the boy from his painting.