Rook is a novel. I’ve got a lot to say in it and about it. It’s currently seeking a publisher with the help of my agent.

1

HERE’S HOW IT STARTS

So it’s 2nd period English, and Shiloh’s staring down a shotgun, an eye for each barrel.
There are three of them, all redneck-chic in camo and orange. Two of them have got that beer-belly-and-whiskers look down. But one of them? The one sighting at Shiloh? He’s a clean cut stick with a cheekful of chew. Their pupils are slits; their faces are blank. The stick repeats himself:

“Now tell me where the Staff is, or I start painting with brains.”

But let’s back up a bit. That was 2nd period. Let’s go back to

THE MORNING BEFORE SCHOOL.

It’s 7 a.m., and Shiloh’s standing in her closet. It’s a walk-in. It’s a big “U” of outfits. She’s swamped. She’s got her hand in her chin, drumming her fingers on her cheek.

Shiloh thinks: there are like forty-nine distinct possibilties here. There’s that flowery jacket thingy I made last year, but Donna likes it, and the other day in the van she actually said “What’s so bad about jean skirts?” like it wasn’t completely obvious; so now I don’t know if I can ever wear it again. And it’s a kinda cutesy too, and I don’t know if that’s really me. So I’m thinking how about this little green half-sweater I bought from that hip old blue haired lady? But the thing about it is that it makes me look like no fun at all. I put it on, and I look like I’m twenty-eight and concerned with quarterly earnings. And I don’t know if the serious/elegant look really fits me.

And then it occurs to me: I don’t know what I am. I’m not anything. Want my stats?

Name: Shiloh (No Middle Initial) Davidson
Sex: Female, and I’m waiting until marriage like a good girl, thank you
Age: 16
Grade: Sophomore
Interests: Not much really, although I do like fashion and making clothes and stuff

But what does that tell you? Zero-not-much-at-all. There have got to be like a billion sixteen year olds in the world, and what have I got to differentiate myself from all of them? Name one significant thing about me, something that’ll make people say, “Hey, you talking about Shiloh Davidson?” Jonathan Edwards, right? He was this guy back in the 1700 somethings, and he got into Yale when he was thirteen years old. And Wikipedia says he is “often associated with the metaphysics of theological determinism.” But me? I’m Contemporary Young Adult #483,034.

So Shiloh got to thinking about that; she got to thinking that she had no idea what “theological determinism” meant, and she basically gave up on everything.

Her room is the standard chaos. If she’d gone to school that day and shot it up (as opposed to what really happened) and one of those documentary TV shows came through and peeked at her place, it’d go like this:

GRUFF NARRATOR
(overdoing it)
When our investigative reporters arrived on the scene, this is what they found.

We get GRAINY SEPIA SHOTS. We get OMINOUS SOUND EFFECTS.

GRUFF NARRATOR (CONT’D)
(still overdoing it)
It should have been obvious that the disorder in SHILOH’s room mirrored the disorder in her mind. By the first morning of her sophomore year, that disorder had reached a breaking point.

She’s got posters on the wall for bands that Donna and Gerald deem “nice”; she’s got a bumper-sticker-covered laptop that squeeeeees from an cheapo aftermarket power supply and takes eighteen minutes to boot up. But that closet? That thing is clean. She spends time in there. She stares at her clothes; she thinks that maybe she’ll ditch this aimlessness if she pins down a particular style, something that’s just so obviously perfect for her, something that brings it home like that logic textbook she had to buy:

MAJOR PREMISE: This particular style is perfect for this kind of person.
MINOR PREMISE: You are perfect for this particular style.
CONCLUSION: You are this kind of person.

She wants a syllogism; she wants to look at herself in the mirror and say, “Q.E.D.” She wants to know who she is so she’ll know what she’ll do. She wants a uniform: it’s clothing that expresses purpose. But if something like that exists for her, it’s not in her closet right now; so she shrugs into a scarlet jacket and charcoal skirt because whatever.

Bacon was happening downstairs. She went to it.

Her “parents”—it still felt weird to say “parents” since the adoption had just gone through yesterday. She’d practiced it in the mirror last night. She always had to look away when she said it, like she was lying. Anyway, they were already downstairs eating breakfast.

“Hey there, big sophomore.”

That’s Gerald. He’s hunched over the plaid plastic tablecloth. He’s soaking the bacon-vibes while he does the weekly long distance chat with Frau Rothbard over in the old country.

Shiloh hears sie deutsche squak through the cellphone. She doesn’t sprechen it. She plops down beside Gerald and sniffs his bacon. Donna lays out Shiloh’s plate but doesn’t have a plate of her own. She wakes up at ungodly hours. She ate breakfast like two hours ago.

More deutsche. Gerald covers the receiver and leans in. He’s an HVAC guy from way back, grey crew cut, big glasses, built solid, forearms like Popeye.

“Mom wants to know how her new granddaughter is feeling this morning.”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Fine, I guess,” Gerald says. “Listen, Mom, I gotta go. No, I’m not going to teach her to speak German. Yes, I’m sure you’ll see her eventually. Okay. Okay. Me too. Auf Wiedersehen.”

Shiloh eats bacon with her hands. She’s gazing at grease-patterns on her plate: little amoebas and paramecia made of animal residue.

“So you excited about your first day of school?” Donna says.

She waves a free hand around: kinda. “I hate not knowing anybody.”

“You can always hang out with your friends from Mag High.”

Shiloh shrugs. She’s thinking, “You don’t know that they stopped talking to me.”

“And besides,” Donna says, “you’ll probably meet some good kids at Gilead.”

“Plus it’s not a government school,” Gerald says with the last of his bacon.

Shiloh snorts. “If it weren’t for this libertarian kick you got on, I wouldn’t have to be switching schools, and none of this would be an issue.”

“But but but,” Gerald says, “it’s not just about that. Gilead’s a better school. The class sizes are tiny. Your SATs will go up, and you might get a scholarship somewhere. UAB for sure.”

Shiloh pictures herself lugging a backpack around Birmingham in a couple years: UAB commuter student. She keeps on imagining Jonathan Edwards—this guy with a wig—making nah-nah-nah-boo-boo faces at her in the crosswalks. He’s thirteen, and he’s wearing a Yale hoodie. Shiloh polishes off her eggs, checks her phone. “Time to go. See you guys later.”

She starts to get up, but they stop her. “Hold on,” they say. “Let’s pray.” They hold hands around the table, and Gerald prays for “special blessings” on Shiloh because regular blessings aren’t good enough for his (now) daughter, and he calls her that—”daughter.” She winces when she hears the affection. She squirms when she hears Donna sniffling. She wonders how long it’s going to last.

BUT LET’S GET BACK TO THE GUNS & STUFF.

So Shiloh’s sitting there shaking, and she can’t see anything else in the world but those two black eyes. Her heart feels like a separate thing, and she just keeps on blinking like it’s going to help. It’s a long way to those barrels—all the way across the classroom—but, as time slips by, it seems like the distance shrinks. They’re like binoculars now they’re so close, and Shiloh thinks: I’m going to die. She keeps on thinking this: I’m going to die. And there’s this turn in her mind. She’s waiting to see how she’ll respond: you’re going to die; how does that make you feel?

Fine, it turns out. It occurs to Shiloh that she’s reconciled to the idea. The hollowness fades from her stomach; her skin stops tingling. It’s like someone threw a blanket over her from the inside. She closes her eyes and starts praying because she figures you might as well be sure.

Then there’s a voice behind her. It’s Judah Cohen, the musician kid: he’s got the swept hair; he’s got the black glasses; he’s got the plaid shirt and skinny jeans.

“It’s not here,” he says.

Shiloh looks back at him. She doesn’t care about the shotgun anymore. She’s already dead to herself. She’s just curious about what’s going on in the world. But Judah isn’t talking to her. He’s talking to the redneck, and his voice is shivering.

“We don’t know where it is. Nobody told us.”

Ben Herbert’s sitting right behind Judah, and they exchange looks, and Shiloh can tell from Ben’s face that something’s going on: Ben looks worried; he looks disapproving. Judah gulps and tries to look back at the rednecks, but he can’t get his eyes off the floor. Ben snorts and stands.

“It’s true,” Ben says. He’s blond and blue, tall and lanky, freckles and polo shirt and khakis.

The one holding his gun on Shiloh flares his fingers out to relieve the pressure. His eyes dart. There’s uncertainty on his face. He wipes sweat on his thigh. He’s about to say something else when one of tubbos gives a hoot.

“Hey! Hey Bobby, look at this!”

He’s turned around and pointing at the tree branch mounted behind Mr. Sterne’s desk. Mr. Sterne’s out. He went to take a call. His desk is littered with redlined papers, cuneiform tablets, and poetry. And there’s that stick on the wall, knotted and dried. It’s not shiny or smooth like some rainmaker or walking cane you’d buy at some chotchkie joint in Gatlinburg. Shiloh hadn’t even noticed it until now.

“Well, how about that?” Bobby says. He backs up a few steps. He keeps his gun on Shiloh. “I got to hand it to ya, Leroy: your faculties of perception are unparalleled amongst mortal men.”

“Why, thank ya,” Leroy says.

“Jethro, grab that dang old thing. ” Bobby steps closer as the third redneck snatches the staff and edges for the door. “Hey, Greaser, what’s your name?”

“Benjamin.” Shiloh sees Ben gulping, twitching. He’s getting his hands ready for something.

“Well, Benjamin, you’re a liar, ain’t ya?” Bobby gestures toward the stick. “There’s the Staff right there! I can’t believe you almost had me fooled. I can’t believe it.” Bobby shakes his head. “And, you know, there’s only a few things I hate in this world. Well, actually, that ain’t true; there’s a whole hell of a lot of ‘em. But, one of ‘em, right up there at the top, is liars.”

“Y’all are going to leave now, right?” Ben says.

“Not just yet.” The redneck shuts one eye; the other follows the crease between the barrels to Shiloh’s face. “Grease gotta learn there’s consequences for your actions. Lying’s a sin, you know.”

He jerks the gun an inch to the right, and both barrels explode.

Shiloh can’t hear anything. There’s too much blood to hear. She feels something at her back: a pressure. It knocks her over, out of her desk. She twists to see. There’s ringing everywhere. There’s shouting everywhere. There’s color everywhere. And, when the colors coalesce, she sees it: what’s left of Benjamin is slumping over her desk. His arm is flailed out and twitching, and his hand is searching. She can’t move. She sees the hand scuttle over her waist and arm. She shuts her eyes and feels his hand grab hers.

Her eyes fly open, and there is nothing. But then a haze appears, clouds of smoke and wisps of incense. She’s on her knees. She’s wearing a single piece of bleached linen that covers her from shoulder to ankle. The silence hums. She thinks it’s an engine, a machine, and then she hears a pattern, something like words, one word, repeated three times. Everything shakes. The ground shatters and tinkles away.

Four things whip through the smoke, covered over in blinking eyes. Seven strikes of lightning. Seven thuds of thunder. The things look like every living thing fused together. Each has four heads; each has four wings. All their wings are touching. They are an infinite square. And above that square is a pulsing field, pure energy visualized. A golden throne is there, and a lamb is standing on it: blood dried around its neck, seven horns upon its head, seven eyes across its face.

Shiloh’s clawing herself away from it. She’s moving without distance above the void. But then there’s pressure all over and endless wings of feathers and skin, swirling around, gusting the incense, flickering the seven candles that hang from nothing. Hands grab her and stand her up.

There’s a fire, a coal clamped in tongs. The tongs press the coal to her lips, then to the palms of her hands; but there’s no pain. Something holds a white stone to her mouth. She swallows it without knowing why. And then another hand appears. It’s hovering over her head, holding a golden vase. The vase tips, and oil streams out, olive oil spiked with myrrh and cinnamon. She feels the oil drip down her nose and cheeks and neck, run down her shoulders, trickle down her legs and onto her feet.

The lightning flashes again. The creatures are gone. The hands and wings disappear with the smoke, and fluorescent light hums in. Shiloh’s eyes focus on a dead moth stuck on the other side of the glass. She feels kinship with it.

Two more shots and something like a bomb. All she can hear now is this tinny A#. She blinks, refocuses: that moth is still there. She wonders how long it’s been there. She wonders if it had any revelations before it died. She wonders if it epiphanized. She wonders what it was thinking just before it went the way of all the earth. Probably: “GIMME SUMMA DAT LIGHT.”

Someone grabs her and drags her through the doorway. Motes of desktop wood-powder are everywhere, like stars. She tracking one in particular. It’s orbiting Judah Cohen’s face. He’s wearing this robe-thing, and is that a spear he’s got? He’s spitting words at her:

“. . . out of here! Run! Get down the stairs and find Sterne now!”

He shoves her, and she tumbles. She catches glimpses of retreating camo from on down the hall; she hears the ping of ricochets off the concrete walls. She limp-rolls down the first flight of stairs, smacks into the landing, and crawls down the next flight. Nothing hurts. Everything is hyper-real. Her heart beats so fast it seems motionless. This is the way to the lunchroom. The girl bathroom is on the right. It occurs to her that she has to pee. She keeps to hands and knees and starts crawling for it.

But then a redneck rounds the corner. He’s got this crossbow tuned into her left eye. He’s got three chins and teeth. He smiles, then frowns like he’s testing expressions out. Shiloh slips and swivels and scoots on the off-white tile. She’s avoiding the negative stimulus. But she’s only just turned around when she bonks her head into something metal and looks up.

It’s the history teacher (also the philosophy and Bible and English teacher), Asher Sterne. He’s thin and thirty with short, spiked hair. He hasn’t lost his acne. He’s got huge green eyes and cheekbones that look like they’re out to get you. He’s wearing a black cloak covered over in golden calligraphy, clasped at his neck with a silver chain. A Star of David is hanging from it. He’s got a green tunic and a pistol in his right hand. His left is behind his back, balled up in a black glove.

That pistol? It’s straight gold and as long as his forearm, seven barrels stacked on top of each other, engraved with lilies and lotuses and palms. Its gears and hammers gleam in shafts of sunlight. And there’s a sound: the gun is ticking.

The redneck’s eyes pass over the barrels, fix on a gear that’s rotating with each tick. His crossbow wavers. He doesn’t sound so good.

“What’s that sound?”

Sterne flicked his eyes to the gears. “It’s counting down.”

“To what?”

“You know what.”

Sterne’s aim nudged downward. A click, a whir, a muzzle flash and puff of smoke. The crossbow clangs to the floor, and Sterne lunges over Shiloh. He drives his shoulder into the guy’s guts. When they land, Sterne’s straddling him, gun to Adam’s apple. The redneck’s eyes are bulged out like marbles. Sterne brings his left hand around and takes off the glove with his teeth.

The redneck sees what’s drawn on the palm of Sterne’s hand and starts freaking out. He’s thrashing and shouting in six languages at once, but Sterne’s too quick: he’s already got his palm against the guy’s forehead. He says the words:

“Suru suru lehasharsheroth.”

And the body goes limp.

“It’s going to be alright, Shiloh, ” Sterne says. “He won’t—”

The guy starts groaning;  Shiloh freaks out in turn: “He’s moving!”

“Already? Good.”

Sterne drags him to the door, kicks it open, and tosses him out. Ravens circle overhead; wind rustles the trees beside the empty playground. Sterne nods toward the road.

“Better run quick if you want to get out of here before the blue light gang shows up.” He slams the door, catches Shiloh’s eyes. “Come on. Just stay behind me, and you’ll be fine.”

Sterne pulls Shiloh after him and stalks up the stairs, back to his classroom. They listen at the door: only whispering and whimpering. Sterne kicks it open and pokes his gun around.

“Guys? How we doing in here?”

“It’s over,” Judah says.

Desks are turned over and shot up. There’s blood everywhere. Shell casings gleam in window-light. Almost all the kids are gone now. Two of the rednecks are sprawled out in front of the chalkboard. Ishmael Shunnarah, the bball MVP, is kneeling over them.

“Dead?” Sterne asks.

“We didn’t have time to ban them.” Ish glances at Sterne’s desk. “They took the Staff.”

Sterne’s attention settles on another body, lying beneath the coat rack, covered in jackets. He recognizes it from the shoes: Ben Herbert. He sits down, hard. Shiloh sees Miriam Tolstoy and Jael Bonhoeffer too. They’re across the room from Ben’s body, trying not to look at the red pool that’s spreading there. Nobody could cry yet.

2

BUT BEFORE THAT . . .

Rook is bowing. And I don’t mean medieval take-a-knee bowing. I mean straight up this-is-your-lord-and-god bowing. He’s prostrate: belly on the ground, arms and legs spread out. His beak is making little scraping sounds against the brick. Rook’s got a beak because he’s a demigod, first-generation product of divine-human miscegenation. Check him out: nine feet tall, bodybuilder physique, tar-black feathers from the ribs up—and that raven head.

He’s bowing because he’s in the court of Ishtar. You may have heard of her. I’ll save you the Wikipedia trip: “Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, war, love, and sex.” Yikes. That’s a baaaaaaad chick. What it is, Rook?

“I need you to do something for me,” she says.

She’s perched on a golden throne. She’s sporting a loincloth and serpent armbands. She figures why should she be a slave to taste? This is how they rolled in the Bronze Age. You won’t catch her “selecting a tasteful outfit.” She’s got things to tend to. She’s got courts to hold. That throne ain’t going to sit in itself. Immortality has made her crazy and bitter. She got implants in 1987. A score of Cambodian souls does her nails every fortnight. They did them magenta last Thursday; so now she’s got magenta nails, and she’s rapping them on throne-armrests.

“It’s important,” she says, “or at least as important as you can handle. There’s a shipment happening tomorrow night. It’s coming through Atlanta. Azrael might be involved. Probably not, but—you know. It’s a staff. I honestly don’t know what it’s about. Maybe it’s just a staff. Maybe it’s just sentimental value, R.I.P.-for-the-Dead-God stuff. But who knows? Anyway, I’m sending some interference, just perfunctory stuff to make them think they beat me. Once they break through, I need you to track them, see where the staff ends up, and get it for me. It’s probably nothing, or else I wouldn’t send you to do this, but who knows? If it’s anything interesting, and you retrieve it for me, you might get rewarded somehow. I’ve been in your dreams; I know what you want. Maybe you’ll get that.”

Rook breathes. His feathers bristle. He’s suppressing his thoughts so she can’t read them. He shows Ishtar emotion alone: excitement.

“Nothing will stop me, Lord.”

Boring. Ishtar checks the tablet her giant-slave is holding out. Next on the appointment-list: “Nergal, fire-lion lord of Sheol, consort of the lord’s sister Irkalla, god of all rats and plagues, etc: four o’clock p.m.”

“Don’t come back,” Ishtar says, “Until you’ve got the staff.”

Rook exits beneath the demolished gift shop and thinks murdering would be just the thing. He doesn’t use the altarport in the outer court. He’s passing by all her downtrodden servitors without looking at them. Hundreds are carving out Ishtar’s hypostyle hall: the sixty-sixth pillar is a sixth of the way to the sixty foot ceiling. The workers are sweating and naked in the dark and very thin. The stink of their labor infuriates him.

One of the souls watches him. She’s forty-three and black. Her head’s shaved like everyone else. On her face is a profound sadness. She is not blank and numbed as the others. The anguish of her material self is seeping through the membrane of the spirit world and crawling over this manifestation. She feels something is about to happen. She watches Rook.

He shoulders through the cuneiformed gates and perches himself on the summit. The disused museum path snakes beneath him. Rockslides had dusted it in rubble. There are warning signs and yellow rails. SUVs and pickups breeze through Highway 31 below him. The thing cuts straight through the mountain. The rocks look rusted. Bits of fossilized trilobites are hanging out.

Rook’s wings are rigid. His mouth is dry. His neck-feathers stand up. His eyes are a swirl of resentment and hubris. He takes off, following a minivan north, toward downtown. He lands in the middle of Five Points and scopes the crowd: hipsters, heathens, hobos, and whores. The whores are crusty. He spots one across from Starbucks. She’s forty-three and numb, dreadlocks and bright yellow bike shorts. Some crack fiend is chatting her up.

She’s had enough of the jabber. She spits in the gutter and heads for Brother Bryan Park. Rook follows. He’s walking through everything. A semi full of frozen chicken drives right through him. Med students penetrate him in the crosswalk. Everyone starts feeling uneasy. The truck driver pulls over and vomits. The med student stumbles and passes out.

She’s in the park now. Her name is Lavonda. She’s got five kids back in Southtown. They’re watching South Park reruns as we speak. They’re only laughing when there’s poop. It’s getting dark now, and the park is cleared out. It won’t get busy for a few hours, but Lavonda’s there early because there’s nothing else to do. She creaks down on a picnic table bench, watching the swaying of cobwebs beneath the faded gazebo.

Rook swoops in. He’s perched on the table. He thinks: Ishtar won’t miss her, but this one will be news for the sons of Adam. They’ll ask why and feel superior. The trash will frighten for a moment, then harden, as they do. It will give soccer moms something to talk about. It’ll trend for a while. It’s worth it. Ishtar won’t miss her, but I’ll know I’ve taken something from her. This is a symbol. This is firstfruits.

And there was evening, and there was morning: the next day. Photographers are swarmed. Bystanders are swarmed. The cops are shuffling. The whole park is taped off. The yellow matches her shorts. She’s hanging in the tree in the center of the park. Her intestines are swaying like willow branches, and her eyes are gone. Her kids are asleep amid pizza boxes.