Something was happening. Balthazar couldn’t quite pin it, but something was happening. Cotton, who seemed to have been absent recently, had appeared again, but they were no longer talking. Cotton was, instead, directing them somewhere, as if they finally had somewhere to go, which was refreshing, but also curious in turn. Had Cotton been scheming? If so, why was he not discussing it, or at least letting Balthazar in on it?
***
When he had made the decision to give up his heroic career, Cotton had burned every last costume, save one. He kept the first he had ever worn as the Eidolon, ostensibly for nostalgic reasons but also, he gradually realized, because he knew if he was ever going to wear this guise again, it would have to symbolize a new beginning, and he could think of no better way to do that than to wear the original garb of the Eidolon, which actually took slightly different form than the others. As the template, it looked a little bolder, even now, years after its creation by Matilda Grenier, friend of his mother in a previous life. The midnight blue that formed the base of the composition was not quite as dark as it would become, while the silver trimmings, from the half-crescent logo on the chest to the belt, visor, boots and gloves were thinner than they later turned out to be. He found he still liked it best, even though he had barely worn it originally, though he could never have explained why. Grenier, and her successors, had made modifications along the way, perhaps in response to work he had commissioned for a traveling stage show featuring a similar design for the lead character of the Begotten Fowl, whom Cotton had conceived as a way to deflect attention from the Eidolon’s own origins. The Fowl reflected a variation on his struggle to gain flight, as it were. Not surprisingly, he would later reflect, that flight became tragic by play’s end, with his Icarus repeating history in very much the same manner the original story had conceived, felled by his own hubris. What had he been trying to escape? His own father’s shadow. In Cotton’s case, his own.
Of course, William Tekamthi had not helped. It was Tekamthi who had given Cotton his copy of the Sidewinder’s memoir, which had so inspired him, both to make Traverse his home and to become a hero himself, as well as warn him of the risk he ran in doing so. At the time, Tekamthi was more engaged in his latter-days activities. On the day Cotton received his public adulation for rescuing Denny Hay, Tekamthi had approached him with the book, and told him to heed it wisely. He had emerged in the daylight, in front of all, had been an official participant in the ceremony, headlined with the mayor, whom Cotton had no memories of other than a photograph he for years kept in his back pocket, until it became too worn, so he threw it away without another thought. The assembly had loved Tekamthi then, still aware of who he was and what he had publicly accomplished. Then he withdrew himself and became forgotten. Even old men couldn’t recall him in later years, and it was exactly what he wanted.
Well, that was not going to be the Eidolon’s fate. Cotton had been thinking about it since Balthazar made him, and there had been so much to consider. He had so much to fear, so much more to lose, and he had all but decided against it when an old friend reappeared. Well, old friend wouldn’t be quite right, but he was at least an old acquaintance, if old were considered liberally enough. He called himself Dust now, but Cotton had mostly known him by reputation in the past, and when he finally met the man, everything fell apart around him, from Calypso’s murder to Dust’s own apparent death…and the assassination of Rodrigo Ramirez, the Cad. They were terrible times indeed, and a bad omen, but Cotton was open to discussion. Discussion just wasn’t what Dust had in mind, though.
He seemed to present Cotton with images for consideration, of past accomplishments as the Eidolon, some he remembered and others he had forgotten, and still more he could never have known about. It was then that he learned the fate of a boy he thought had died, on the day he killed Ramirez, which had had such influence on his actions and thoughts, had plagued him, the failure of it. He could never accept failure, and the Cad had been his greatest failure, when all along he had been telling himself that it would be his greatest achievement, because no one else had been concerned about him. He learned that there were, in fact, those who had been concerned about the boy who had become so entangled in Traverse’s gang culture, shot in crossfire the Eidolon had so desperately tried to disrupt. Besides the EMTs Cotton had not seen arrive to collect him, there was the concerned family, a widowed father and three sisters, all younger, who had given up on the boy, and each other, but who now came together to watch over his recovery, which carried on steadily. Cotton wept to learn this.
Dust, in fact, had nothing to say to Cotton, but he wanted to. Cotton could tell, and he could see that Dust was waiting, although for what Cotton could only guess, perhaps for Cotton himself to be ready. What did he need to do? The decision to resurrect the Eidolon was a pleasing one, a step in the right direction. Even before he had recovered the old costume, the glimmer of thought he’d given it was enough for Dust, who took it as all he needed, departing just as soon, as quickly, as he’d made his appearance.
Resurrecting the Eidolon. There was so much implication in it, so much conceit; Cotton had perhaps avoided it, rejected it for so long, because he really did fear himself, and he began to understand that he had taken on this role, in the beginning, for the same reason. He wasn’t saving others, but rather himself, directing a force he had found within himself that he could not understand, or accept. He became the Eidolon because he did not believed the Eidolon existed, and Rodrigo’s murder had finally convinced him, for a time, that he had been right all along. He really wasn’t a hero. There were no heroes, not really, just pretenders, poseurs. He had come to the conclusion that he had been part of the problem all along because he did not believe in good anymore. It was nothing more than a concept, and an abstract one at that. It was amazing the things one could convince oneself of.
But there was merit to the things he had learned since then, in his explorations, in his time off. He would adopt a new method, sparing himself the rod while he became the ram with greater efficiency than he had ever known before, and he had been a student of efficiency, or so he had always thought, had always told himself. He could no longer allow himself to make mistakes. If he accepted a new burden, it was to carry the memory of his failure with him, as a constant reminder of the path he needed to remain on.
He knew it was impossible, but he was willing to accept that, too, because he had finally found a measure of peace, borne of the peace that dead friends had left behind. Tekamthi had been his friend, whether Tekamthi realized it or not. Hopper’s death, in the way it played out, had validated the course their lives had taken, which was important, because it brought closure to what had ruptured Cotton’s life in the first place. Whereas Hopper had never lost his innocence, it seemed as if Cotton had never truly known his, and that was the greatest loss any individual could bear. Cotton almost hadn’t. He spent most of his life agonizing over it, wondering if it had ever been in his control, if it were ever in anyone’s.
Tekamthi’s life seemed to suggest it wasn’t. As the Dread Poet, he had dedicated the remaining years of his life to anonymity, the theory that good things did not need to be recognized to be understood, or appreciated, but rather that they merely be allowed to be what they were because that was all that truly mattered. In effect, it seemed to work better that way, because it negated the possibility of analysis, which was both mankind’s greatest gift and worst failing. Putting too much thought into anything, whether well-intentioned or otherwise, had an alienating effect, and mankind was not meant to be alone.
To recover the costume, he made his way to Cumberland Cemetery, located in one of the older districts in the city. Most of those buried there had been so for a long time. The recently added needed special claim. Cotton had made a burial plot he thought filled such a need, in the memory of Odin Roy, digging the hole himself and leaving the costume within, filling the dirt again so that no one would have noticed the ground had been disturbed. It was only a grave of sorts, and had no tombstone. He supposed there might have been a possibility that someone might have eventually used the site for a more official ceremony, but it was a slight one and he had been willing to take the chance. Perhaps he had always risked too much. This time, however, the risk paid off.
He noticed that not so far away from his unmarked plot lay the final resting place of Aubrey Oldenburgh, someone who had once shown him kindness. He had nothing to leave for her except his vow to become the man she had always believed he was. Others had already left flowers, and a card. Cotton wondered if he should read it, if he owed her that, too. He no longer knew what he owed the world, but he knew he owed it something, and the Eidolon would be, would continue to be, the method of his repayment. Maybe not everyone had a debt, maybe no one did, but he had chosen to assume his, long ago, and that choice had bound him to itself. He no longer had a choice. This was his consequence, and he would learn to deal with it; he had no other choice.
It was still early in the afternoon. He had time to retrieve his costume and refill the hole once more, and consider where he would make his transformation into the Eidolon. He had once had so many options. They were gone now, as was his past. This was a new beginning, and he was determined to make the most of it. He needed to choose wisely.
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