THE DEVIL'S BIT (serial novel) 1

Chapter 1 Iliana looked out at the edge of the patio

                           

                                         

It was a quiet morning, then again, it was Paris and to be expected. A mecca for brilliance and dignity even in the smallest movement, it was right and good that a young lady pursue dance in such a place.

Paris didn’t wake with instant cacophony, didn’t respond to the insistence of it citizens, didn’t bow down to the money that poured in from all over the world. It took its time to introduce itself to the day. Even the sun itself appeared one ray at a time. Not enough to suggest the sweltering heat that it intended to bombard the streets and buildings with by early afternoon. As the bluish dawn took over the sky, it seemed tentative, but to those who relished the early hours and were impatient with the night life, it was an introduction to a beloved city, one that offered the willing an opportunity to live in dignity, and study art and perhaps take a place with the greatest artists of the world.

Iliana opened her eyes to the silence, respected the quiet that greeted her, noticed the lighter grey color that replaced the night, and smiled.

 The door to Iliana’s postage stamp apartment, opened to a central square, with a small fountain that only flowed when the building’s manager showed the building to prospective renters. Two years ago, she was one of them, and delighted in the water that sprouted out of the middle of the patio, and wondered how she could possibly afford such a beautiful place. In her broken Slavic accented French, she thanked the landlord for showing her the place. She tried to explain that she was sure this was out of her price range.

“Ah, but you are part of the National Ballet, no?”

“Why, yes.”

“You are welcome here, we will sign the papers later.” The woman, stooped over slightly, had a grace about her, her feet brushed the floor as she walked across the patio, and beckoned her to follow. When she got to a small dark room on the other side of the patio, she twisted a key off of her key chain and handed it to her.

“but I?”

“You have somewhere else to stay?”
“no, not really.”

“It is very simple, yes or no?”

“well, no.”

“Then, take the key and be sure to lock the apartment, you know how to do that right?”

“Yes.”

The woman disappeared behind the dark door and Iliana stood bewildered, and finally shrugged her shoulders and made her way back to the apartment that would be her home.

  She remembered the first time she entered into this place as she opened the door to look at the patio of the Paris apartment. She recognized the weed at the edge of the dried earth, an impossible place to thrive. It grew in the shadow of the fountain. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply and started to stretch, methodically wiggling her toes, to ankles and slowly through the calves. The sunlight shimmered its way through her hair.

The earth around the plant moved one small clump at a time, the fringed leaves waved slightly, but there was no breeze present.

Iliana stretched her fingers and shook her hands out as she had done so many times after her warm up.

She turned her back to her little patio and opened the sliding door into her small apartment.

The plants leaves grew still. Its thin tall stalks held only a few flowers much less than the male gendered plant.

“Echo, connect me to Eric.” Her cell phone went on speaker as she spoke.

“How wonderful to hear your voice.”

“Not now. It is time. We have to make a difference, and this is only way I know how.”

“But your career is just beginning.”

“And it is a career with no soul unless it includes the souls that have no voice in the arts.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Eric’s sigh filled the small studio apartment.

A white sheet of paper rested on a kitchen countertop that doubled as a table in the micro kitchen. Scrawled across the top, the thoughts that raced through her mind: “we are all of us, we are artists, we breathe, our hands move, the plants grow.”

She turned to the patio and back to her computer and put in a series of phrases she thought might identify the unusual plant that seemed to thrive when she did her morning stretches: six 8 cm leaves around the base of a single stem, oblong, flat, smaller leaves around center stem, scattered. White to green flowering top, much taller than the stalk. She pushed the search button, and continued with her stretches.

As she read the results she looked at the world map on the small vertical wall adjacent to the white kitchen table, and traced her hand across the central part of a section of the United States, and shook her head.

“Eric, are you still there?”

“I’ve been talking for the last 10 minutes. What? You weren’t listening, do I have to repeat the whole thing?”

“I know where we have to go.”

“What?”

“I’ve been talking about your career, not where to travel.”

“It’s time.”

“Not that stuff from the beyond, from the afterlives again.”

“No, it’s from the here and now.” Iliana shook her head, now glad he couldn’t see the expression on her face, he would know the truth if he saw it.

“Set up a meeting with a community in Western Massachusetts.”

“The United States?”

“Is there another Massachusetts?”

“No, but, where is it your ancestors migrated to?”

“No wonder I don’t say anything to you and expect you to remember.”

“Where?”

“Hey I have to go to the studio, all warmed up.” Iliana clicked save on her tabs, and closed her computer.

“Ok, meet you after.”

“Yes, good bye, and Echo turn off the lights.”

It was only 5 am and the Paris streets were silent. The city’s street lights turned off automatically. In the dawn  a man crossed a street in front of Iliana’s apartment. There wasn’t enough light yet to create a shadow. He cupped his hand to his ear and whispered, “she is ready.”