The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco Read Free Book Online

Magellan, unable to tell if his eyes are open or closed.
    “Have you a petition? Answer yes or no.”
    He thinks of his flying dream, and of Ollimer’s word, and in the grip of an inscrutable impulse he says, “Yes.”
    The familiar brings the box back out, but the Divinity Student shakes his head and beckons with his finger. He can feel the smaller man’s hand resting dry and light, like a bird, on his back as he leans close to whisper his message.
    With a nod and a swirl of his robe, the familiar retreats into the wings. Now the Divinity Student is alone with Magellan, smoke between them and around them, light crashing down through the fragmented window, the Divinity Student feels an inky feeling inside, a draining in his head, the closeness of the air, looking at the high priest sitting there like a monument. So, he sits too, and gazes fascinated at Magellan’s silent face. He bites back a desire to ask him about Ollimer’s word.
    Instead, one hand on the desk, he leans in, and speaking quietly says, “Show me what it’s like to fly.”
    Again, Magellan stands. A jar is brought to him, this time with a buzzard pickled in it. The same thin odor steams out as the lid is twisted off, only this smell is different, dry and pungent where the cat smelled almost sweet. He swallows with difficulty watching Magellan’s great hands dipping into the formaldehyde—abruptly he thinks it’s time to go, he doesn’t want to anymore, but those hands come out dripping, thinking it’s time get up and get out, too late, cool drops spattering his face, that smell burning his nose, rushing up behind his eyes, and Magellan’s dreaming, painted face coming at him now, eyes open, the palm comes up, fine vapor shimmers his face, vertigo like a fast elevator, the weight of his body lifts and he’s cut adrift, curling around Magellan’s head like incense smoke, breath leaving, heart leaving, the light sucks him away, right away without a trace, or would, but Magellan holds him. Now he sees the window’s fragments of glass and fragments of light focus through the back of Magellan’s head, beaming out of his face, tinted green where it shines through his eyes, pink and white where it shines through his face—the desert white under the sun, blurring by underneath, the pull of the wind, hot air rising, motion on the plain’s floor between the hills, water on the horizon. Turning and rising for a long time, getting high past the hilltops, and hungry, watching the ground, sun just rising. There’s a twinge in his back. Seeing farther and farther, nothing but him and the air, the horizon around his shoulders and dwindling behind his feet. As time goes on he gets to feel the air currents, upswells and churnings on all sides and below. In a moment he sees himself as high as the sun, harmless clouds on all sides, stiffness spreading across his shoulders and outstretched wings. Lightheaded he has an impulse to fly straight up, but at that moment he spies a bleached and torn carcass on the ground, and hungrily he drops in a twisting dive his stomach lurching.
    Weight, and breath, and pulse come back. Magellan sits alone and still at the desk in front of him. The familiar has closed the jar and is shuffling back into the wings with it, light dwindling with the day’s passing, the Divinity Student sits without moving, looking numbly across at Magellan, until he is told to leave.

six: the oro
    He has lost himself in the streets, wandering out.
    toward the city limits. Eventually he comes to himself, doesn’t know where he is, the pavement ends and before him a small grove of old oak trees stands in dappled shadows. There’s nobody around, so he ventures out onto the grass, feels its coolness through his shoes, lets the branches brush the top of his head. To him the trees smell dusty, like a familiar old room, they dust the air with their branches
    and fill the grove with a white haze. He remembers the vertigo of flying, Magellan’s dreaming