A Mild Caution From The Author: The following story, unlike every other story I have written for the past year, is not a fairy tale. I do not consider its content graphic or otherwise disturbing, but for those who have read my work prior to these fairy tales, be aware it is closer to that prior work than to a fairy tale and proceed or do not accordingly. That said, I hope you enjoy this departure…

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“Bones of the Hand”

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When my right hand feels cool, I know it is time to wind it. The key hangs from a silver chain about my wrist and sounds a gentle chime when I walk. I place two drops of pure oil inside my hand once a week, without fail. The steel is tarnished. There are worn spots, on my fingertips and on my palm, which always shine more brightly than the rest. I tell all the children I meet that they’re shiny because that’s where the magic is. I still polish my hand with each oiling, but many years have passed since I severed my own flesh and blood from my wrist.

The dried remains of my right hand show me where I should go. I carry the bones in a leather bag around my neck. I am a fortune teller by trade, a teller of stories as I have always been. I have my cards, and my pen and ink all packed away, crystals and coins with which I unmake the future, but my hands have always been my truest guides.

Above, outside, the stars read out time and direction like clockwork. Neither machine nor man dictates their movements. Their distance is enormous, and we are insignificant beside them, yet all their gravity cannot lift us to them. We are too heavy. The stars are my guide and my guardian, my watch, as it were. The stars were our first machine, and whenever I want to know where I am, I always look to the sky. But whenever I want to know where I will be I look to the earth.

Lights flicker in the shrouded mirror, neon, abstracted by the surfaces of bottles and refracted by the substances therein. I recall campfires on cold desert nights in the mountains, where the trackways haven’t reached. I’ve told my stories here, exchanged for sanctuary and sustenance. My case is propped beneath my seat at the bar, and I find myself toying with the bag around my neck again. The chain carelessly snags long strands of my brown hair as I tug it free. I hold my right hand in my left until the bones are warm, before casting them onto the stained countertop.

The bones clatter, a chair slides out next to me, and my fingers point at the man who sits down to order. He smells like gasoline and tobacco, and when he slides out his stool, he knocks my boot off the guitar case. I gather my bones with my right hand, and tell the bartender I’ll pick up the gentleman’s tab. I don’t actually use the word gentleman. The first thing he notices is my guitar case. The first thing I see is a badge clipped onto his leather jacket. It’s at least five years old and fifty miles out of his jurisdiction.

“Sorry about that.” He nods at my legs, and scans me sequentially, gathering in details with a practiced gesture He is no more aware of this act than I am of my heartbeat, and he could claim no more control over it than I could hold over my pulse.

I re-cross my legs and tell him he can pay me back. He says his name is Jeremiah, and I say my name is Erica, and that’s a lot like the truth.

* * *

Jeremiah’s car is old, positively ancient. I tell him it must be older than he is, and he says, “I’m pretty sure it’s older than my pop.” I tell him it doesn’t look very much like a police agent’s car, and he doesn’t look at me, but he says, “I don’t suppose it does, no.” The same does not apply to him. Five or more years have not erased the razor clean lines that seem to frame all police agents’ faces. They are not engineered, but they all somehow end up looking the same. Two lightpoles wash out the color from his skin and from my clothes, my dyed shirt and patchwork jeans. I enjoy the affectations of the fortune teller as much as I enjoy singing my stories. I enjoy weaving a gaudy thread into the future, and tearing out the stitching where it’s been laid. The future has been written out for most of the world already, and it has been searching for me since I learned to sing.

I can’t tell what color the car is in this light. It looks deeply magenta, and the paint is chipped to the sheet metal in places. He opens the trunk with a separate key. I haven’t seen a trunk with letters on it in a long time. It says “GTX”, the G and the X are smaller than the T, and I can’t remember what that stood for. Nothing, maybe. Perhaps I never knew. I say thanks when I dump my guitar in the back. “You do this a lot?” I admit that I have done it rather a lot. I tell him ever since I ran away from home. That’s a lot like a truth.

The car smells like an old car on the inside, a smell the precise opposite of a new car. It smells of life, not chemicals. Jeremiah smiles at me again. “I guess I’m a sucker for a pretty face.” Well, maybe I am too. He’s driving towards the central southeast node, long ago called the Columbus District, if my memories are reliable. The bones said to follow him.

His GTX starts with an animal noise. I flinch involuntarily; it sounds very much like the wolves of the Second Machine. Jeremiah mistakes my expression and grins. “Engines don’t sound like this any more.” The few beat up cars remaining in the bar’s parking lot seem to shrink back. Plastic things, they are barely young and already dying. It reassures me to see them pale and frightened. Perhaps this is where my hand was guiding me. The past, like the stars, is beyond the reach of the Second Machine’s inexorable, inflexible future. I relax and lean into the deeply cushioned seat, as the GTX leaves the bar behind.

“Have you got a gig?” he asks. “You know, out there?” He nods in an easterly direction. I raise a querulous eyebrow at him. “I mean, the guitar case,” he says. He’s nervous. “It’s a guitar, right?” I give him a smile and assure him it is a guitar, but that no, I have nothing waiting in the District. Except I say node, not District. I play my fortunes, I explain, where I find them. “Oh, a gypsy then, are you?” I smile. “Can you tell my fortune?” I ask him how much further he can drive tonight. It’s almost midnight. He shifts in his seat, and the GTX shakes. I sink further into my own seat for a moment.

“I’ll make good time,” Jeremiah assures me. The trackway is straight and speckled along either edge by distant lights. His hand is loose on the wheel, as the road’s siderails gently steer the car. There hasn’t been a moon for as long as there have been trackways, if not longer. Light circles float thirty feet above the highway. Their luminescence dims all but the most intractable stars. Our world glows in space, now, webbed with light. I rest my left hand on the bag at my neck and wonder where the road will lead. The Second Machine has lit all the paths already.

* * *

Sterile gray walls, and a sterile white bed. I crossed the automated desk clerk’s hand with silver, paid for the night. It had no face and only the cheapest optic recorders. I know trackside flops like this. They won’t dump their files until midnight rolls around. I haven’t seen the wolves in a week, so perhaps the Machine has lost my trail. Of course, if all I wanted to do was hide, I could stop telling fortunes.

The GTX waits outside the locked room, guarding the gate. My empty boots guard the door. We have only a single bed, with disposable sheets that will dissolve in eleven hours, and no windows. I begin spreading out my bedroll and Jeremiah says, again, “Well, how about that fortune now?” I tap the key hanging from my wrist against my palm, and look at his guarded yet guileless face. I inform him my fortunes are not free, and to his inquiring look I explain the price isn’t always immediately apparent. He says, “I’ll have to take my chances. Isn’t that how fortunes normally work?” I allow that he has seen to the heart of the matter as I delve into my pack for the cards.

“What,” he says, pointing into my pack, “is that for?” I tell him it is my pen, and I write stories with it. “You write with that?” He seems unnerved. I also tell fortunes with it, I explain, but only rarely. I show him the cards and close my pack. My pen and paper are not meant for him.

I sit with my legs crossed under me, and lay the deck on my bedroll. I invite Jeremiah to sit, which he does, in a certain way I’ve seen in men who are not accustomed to sitting without chairs. This room has only one chair (also made of plastic), and he has draped his leather jacket over it. He moves as if he should creak the same as his jacket. I run steel fingers along the side of the deck before drawing the first card. I have never shuffled my cards. Why would I?

I turn over the card, a woman with gray eyes. I tell him he knows the girl, as if that were not immediately apparent.

“I suppose,” he says, “there is some kind of resemblance. To the girl, I mean. I was looking for a woman. Or I am looking for.”

I wonder aloud at the fact that he seems not to have found this gray-eyed girl, and I draw a second card. It is the crossroads, a pairing of streets I have seen many times over in the cities and hubs and nodes of the Second Machine. Signs mark the streets, and the towers of a bridge mark an unseen river. I tell him the crossroads are empty.

“She was supposed to be there. But she wasn’t. It was a mistake.”

I remind him that the Machine never makes mistakes.

“That’s said. I agree that’s said.”

I draw another card, this one an empty window, with just one crack. The window, I tell him, is also empty.

“She wasn’t home. I went back there, but it was all wrong. She was gone, days gone, information long post-dated.”

I ask if, perhaps, he had found some way into the past, days or decades, into uncertainty. I draw another card and turn it over, the midnight road, lit by circles. The car could be Jeremiah’s GTX. I tell him he is searching, or running.

“It’s been awhile. Backtracking. I went looking for her, like I was supposed to do. Went out to pick up the trackway where she took off. I think I ran off course somewhere. I’m never going to see that girl.”

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, I remind him. And I make more than others.

“That’s said too. I’ve made mistakes… Everyone?”

Some people’s mistakes, I explain, have to be made by someone else.

Jeremiah has leaned far forward. His elbows rest on his knees and his shoulders are over my cards. He looks at me, close now, neck arched painfully. His eyes are tired, and only distantly curious. “But what do your cards have in store? More mistakes, maybe.” He says this with a smile.

I correct him. My cards only describe mistakes. Mistakes of the past. Mistakes of the future. I draw and turn another card. This one bears the image of a handgun. His handgun.

“What’s that?”

I ask him if he means his card or the night sounds.

“The sounds. Well, I know this.” Two fingers tap the card. “Are you calling this a mistake?”

I tell him it is his fortune, and I can stop telling it if he does not want more. But he doesn’t stop me from turning over another card. A man looks up at a wall of machines. The man could be Jeremiah, seen from behind.

“I think it’s just a trick of the mind. The sounds I mean. I’ve heard sounds far away come in very close.” He’s leaned back again. “Right?”

No, I reply, and move the card in line with the others. It’s close. He finally looks at the card, and doesn’t say anything. He hooks a hand into his jacket pocket and it comes out with a gun.

It sounds like metal on metal outside. Clicks. Low decibel, high pitched whining.

“Well.” His elbows are back on his knees, and he’s not looking at the cards. “It could be maintenance.”

I offer to stop. He’s looking away, but shakes his head. I turn over another card. It is our hotel room door, with no room for doubt.

He’s not really watching the cards. He’s watching the door. Something slides across the pressed plastic. I hear another click, a slow whir, and a heavy weight falls into the plastic. The sounds deepen into noises of resonant, mechanical effort.

“I don’t guess it is.” His chin rests on one hand. He has the gun in the crook of his elbow, pointed at the door. I open my pack with one hand, and draw another card with my right hand. The door rattles and splinters around the hinges. The cheapest prefabricated plastic.

I lay my quill on the bedroll, next to its card. The door is cracked along the middle. Whirs and revolutions per minute and that odd sound metal makes grinding against itself. “What’s the next card.” Jeremiah stands up.

I turn over the last card, and the plastic around the screws gives out.

Jeremiah’s gun reports, and shakes the walls. One of the wolves is catapulted, backwards, out of the room, its head caved. I pick up my pen and rise to my feet. The wolves of the Second Machine come.

Before I learned to write, I learned to dance. I was taught that to dance was to tell my own story, and to hold my own future. This was how I learned to tell stories, and this was how I learned to tell fortunes. After I learned to dance, I took up a pen for the first time. In this way I learned that I might write the future for someone other than myself. But the strokes are so final, and the ink is so precious, that I taught myself the cards and the crystals. The bones of the hand were my final lesson.

My ears are already ringing painfully from Jeremiah’s first shot when he fires again. His gun was made by the Machine, and to describe its sound as a thunderclap is not so much a cliche as it is a technical term. There are noises so loud they take more than one sense to hear. When he fires his second shot, I taste aluminum for a second time. One of the two wolves in the door caves into the doorframe and shatters the drywall.

The wolves are black, and resemble wolves in the way of children’s drawings. A third wolf growls and makes the short leap across the room. The grip slides against my right palm, and I guide my pen with my fingers. I invite the wolf into my dance, but it is just a machine. It has plotted the course of my future. Too late for that, I write an ending for the wolf. Black ink stains the bedsheets and my quill. Worthless.

Sounds are coming to me through ten feet of water. Jeremiah takes the head completely off another wolf. Through some miracle of the laws of motion, the head jumps straight up into the air and the wolf’s body drops dead. The wolves crawl over their dead, even though they were never alive. They are large machines, and like all large machines they move with an unexpected speed. Wolves move under Jeremiah’s gun while he’s still holding down the trigger.

I step between and around the cards on my bedspread. The room shakes from the gunfire and the wolves (they must weigh a solid ton each). I dance, and I tell my story, and I write. The wolves, guided by the immaculately plotted parabolas of the Machine, continue to fall outside their own margin of error.

* * *

Bodies are on the floor and something like blood is on the walls, but none of it is mine and Jeremiah is still standing. Just that much is right with the world. The air glitters around the vents of his gun, and the room smells powerfully of formaldehyde.

The door to the room is gone. What was left of it has been crushed beneath the wolves. The doorway itself has been shattered, along with some significant portion of the wall in which it once resided. Jeremiah says something I cannot hear, and I kneel to pick up my cards. They have not moved. Black wolves’ blood has stained my bedroll, but the cards remain untouched. I look at the last card. It is a black wolf with yellow eyes.

I return my cards meticulously to their proper place. I have always taken care with my instruments of storytelling. My quill I wipe on the disposable sheets before I rise again. The fine crystal tone circling my ears has begun to fade in the time I have taken to collect myself. I have not yet put my quill away. Its wicked drop point hangs even with my ankle.

Jeremiah has the gun, holding it in the seeming-casual grip which keeps his hands from being burned with every shot. I thank him for the ride and tell him I probably ought to go. He is almost, but not quite, facing the front of the room. His gun is almost, but not quite, pointed at me. Something about the mechanical wreckage absorbs his attention. “I never saw them before. I mean, I knew, but I never… Well.” He shrugs.

I give him the only explanation I have. They are wolves. “Wolves,” he says. “For the mistakes. When there are mistakes, it sends the wolves.” His gesture in my direction brings his gun to focus on me. The gun barrel’s mechanics are not audible, but I am close enough to feel the high pitched whine of its adjustments. He notices the gun first, and me second, but the gun doesn’t move. “So you’re a mistake.”

My right hand feels cold. I hold up my hand, without looking away from the gun or setting down my pen. I slot the key into my palm, and it locks in place where my carpal bones used to be. I turn the key, and wind my hand, and I tell Jeremiah that I am not (as he puts it) a mistake. I am every mistake. I’m every error, every miscalculation in the Second Machine. The Machine plots out the future, and I tell fortunes. I write the stories that aren’t in the Machine.

I put my arms back down at my sides. I have written more than I would like for one night. His gun swings down, and he looks through what little is left of the hotel doorway. “And the girl?” I tell him I read her fortune, and she’s found her own story. “Well.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I turn away. I pack up my pen, and clean off my bedroll as best as I am able before stowing it.

I thank him again for the ride as I shoulder my bag. “You know… Where’ll you sleep?” I shrug. Maybe I’ll just sleep later. “I’ll give you a lift. You can sleep on the way.” He cracks half a smile. “For the fortune.” I give him a smile back and tap my key against my wrist. Only if that’s what he wants, I tell him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can’t go back anyway. You know.” He inclines his head towards the wolves before lifting his jacket from the chair. I admit that this is probably true, and pick up my boots. I walk to the GTX in stocking feet. My guitar is still safe in the back, and the car’s color is burgundy under the glow of ancient, fluorescent lines.

Jeremiah coaxes his car to life and it growls territorially at the broken machines inside the hotel. He says he hopes I know where we can go from here. And he says thank you. He says, as the GTX pulls out of the hotel parking lot, that he still does not quite see how I write with my quill.

“I write but rarely,” I say. “I wrote for you tonight, wrote your ending into a beginning. I wrote a whole story just for you.” I point out to the trackway. “Go east. There are still some roads as yet unlit. I’ll help you find them.”

The GTX growls, and I sink into the seats. “If we need them, I have maps.”

I sleep.