Terry Riley's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Riley left the food shack with the feather in his coat pocket and the taste of cold chili on his tongue. He needed to know what the feather was before he walked into the club. A real owl feather narrowed the threat to a man with a bird. Something else meant something else. He knew one person in the city who could tell him plain, and that was Frost. Frost cooked out of a strange rig on the edge of the park — a cast iron grill braced on four pink pig-leg supports, a wide paella pan simmering on top with a nest of noodles in red sauce. Frost worked the pan without looking up. Riley set the feather on the wood rail beside the burner. "Tell me what this is," he said. Frost wiped his hands on his apron. He picked the feather up by the quill and turned it against the light. He ran a thumb down the vane. He held it under his nose. He set it back down. "Not from a bird," Frost said. "Bird feathers lock. You pull the vane apart, it zips back. This one doesn't. The shaft's wrong too. Hollow the whole way. Real quill tapers." He stirred the pan once. "Someone made this. Careful work. Old work." He looked at Riley for the first time. "Whoever gave it to you wanted you to think it came off a bird. It didn't." Riley took the feather back. He thanked Frost and walked. He cut through the park until the trees thinned and he saw what he had passed a hundred times without reading. A grey stone tomb stood above the ground on a small rise, big as a shed, its lintel carved with letters he could now make out: All the powerful, All the world. Below the words, cut smaller and cleaner, a name. Bronson. Fresh moss on old stone. A hollow oak leaned beside it, its cavity black and wide enough to stand in. Pale things caught in the bark. More feathers. Dozens. All the same as the one in his pocket. Riley stood there a long minute. The man in the purple suit had a tomb already built and waiting, and a tree full of fake feathers he handed out like calling cards. The owl was a prop. The bird outside his window was real, but the feather was theater. Bronson wanted him scared of the wrong thing. Riley put the feather back in his pocket and turned toward downtown. The club opened at nine. He would be there at nine.