Fantasy MagazineIssue 2

Table of Contents

Sparking Anger by Margaret Ronald (fiction)Ragazzo by Bruce McAllister (fiction)Lessons With Miss Gray by Theodora Goss (fiction)Cotton Country by Aaron Schutz (fiction)Nine Tails, Hundred Hearts by Yoon Ha Lee (fiction)Children of the Revolution by Lavie Tidhar (fiction)On the Bus by Patricia Russo (fiction)Light of the Moon by Karen Anne Mitchell (fiction)The Novel of the Holocaust by Stewart O'Nan (fiction)The Voices of the Snakes by Karina Sumner-Smith(fiction)The Sphinx and Ernest Hemingway by Wade Ogletree(fiction)Madonna Littoralis by Caitlin R. Kiernan (fiction)It’s Against the Law to Feed the Ducks by Paul G.Tremblay (fiction)

Interview: Theodora GossBook Reviews

About the Editors

© 2006 Fantasy Magazinewww.fantasy-magazine.com

Sparking AngerMargaret Ronald

Lisa dug up the first skull just before sunset, as thelast light streaked the stony earth of the garden. Herhands recognized it before her eyes did, and she jerkedaway, rocking back onto her heels so violently she almosthit the patio.

From behind her, the sound of an angry string sectionstarted up again. Lisa shook her head—she’d gotten usedto Mrs. Kostianaya’s single-minded musical tastes, butshe didn’t have to like them—and rubbed at her eyes. Butthe skull remained where she’d dug, staring up at herthrough a fringe of weeds. One eyesocket was clottedwith dirt; the other gaped sightlessly at her. I don’tbelieve it, she thought, but reached forward nonethelessand brushed the earth away.

A hand touched her shoulder. Lisa yelped and pulledthe skull free, curling it against her stomach. Later shewould wonder at the strength of her response, how shehad first moved to protect it.

“You’re still out here?” her mother asked. “It’sgetting late.”

Lisa forced herself to relax. “You’re home just aslate.”

“Work ran over.” She crouched beside Lisa, awkwardin her business attire. “You’ve done some good workhere. I don’t think even Nanna could have done better.”

Lisa abruptly remembered what she was cradlingagainst her body. “Mom—” She lowered the skull till itrested on the ground. “Is—is this sort of thing usual?”

Her mother gave the skull a brief glance. “What, alump of gravel? I should think so. This garden probablyused to be an old driveway. I’m surprised you can getanything to grow.”

“Gravel,” Lisa repeated. She set the skull down. Itcould look like gravel, in the dimming light . . . but itwasn’t. “Mom, I think . . . I think maybe I’m crackingup.”

Her mother rose to her feet, brushing off her skirt.“It’s only been a week, Lisa. You can’t have cabin feveralready; you’ve got two more to go.”

“Can’t I just go out once? Just to the store with you?”“No.” She helped Lisa up. “I’ll talk to Mrs.

Kostianaya, though. Maybe we can see about borrowingher plot, since she doesn’t seem to use it. That’ll give yousome more work, keep your mind off things. And maybeI’ll ask her to go easy on the Mussorgsky; she’s playing it

so loud I can hear it out here.”Lisa tried to smile, but she felt the skull’s mute gaze

on her back all the way inside.

* * * *

In the morning, Mrs. Kostianaya’s plot was occupiedby a sagging storage shed. “She must have ordered itrecently,” Lisa’s mother said. “Oh, well. I’ll talk to heranyway.”

Lisa didn’t answer. Mrs. Kostianaya had been playingher one song over and over, this time till midnight, andshe’d started up again at eight o’clock. Before hersuspension, Lisa hadn’t noticed how often Mrs.Kostianay played her music, but now with TV, computer,and headphones all off limits, it was close to driving hernuts. She worked on this week’s homework as long asshe could stand to be inside, then fled to the garden.

But Mrs. Kostianaya was there first, having left hermusic still playing. Lisa tried not to scream. “Morning,Mrs. Kostianaya,” she said through her teeth.

“Rotten, stinking hulk! Sulfur-smelling piece of junk!What do you think you’re doing here?” Mrs. Kostianayahobbled closer to the shed and whacked it with her cane.“Stupid thing,” she panted, “dragging me down, don’t

you understand? I can’t afford you! I have to look aftermyself!” She kicked at the sagging clapboards and lapsedinto a spate of feeble Russian.

She’s talking to the shed, Lisa realized. Christ, that’ssad. “Mrs. Kostianaya, are you all right?”

Mrs. Kostianaya cast a glare over her shoulder, thenstumbled back as if shocked to see Lisa there. “You can’ttake it,” she said. “I’m an old woman. I’m weak. I don’thave any to spare.”

Before Lisa could speak, the old woman burst intotears, gave the shed one last kick, and hobbled away. Theshed creaked and slid a little, like a cowering dog. Lisaglanced at it. “Don’t you fall down,” she muttered.“Mom’ll pitch a fit if you crush her seedlings.”

It didn’t answer, and Lisa felt a dull burn of shame. Itwasn’t fair to make fun of Mrs. Kostianaya; she was, likeshe said, old and weak.

One doesn’t necessarily follow the other, she thoughtangrily. Nanna was old, but she wasn’t weak. Not by along shot.

But Nanna was dead, years dead. She eyed the skullon its perch at the edge of their plot. It hadn’t changed,save that daylight made it impossible to mistake forgravel. So I’m cracking up, she thought. At least I won’tbe the only crazy in the building.

By noon she’d dug up five more skulls, the shockfading with each one. Her mother returned home on herlunch break and came out to see the garden. “Is there areason,” she asked, “why you’re putting little dirt moundsall around my garden?”

Lisa looked at her, at the jawless skulls, and back.“Rocks,” she lied. “There must have been an olddriveway here or something.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. Still, keep at it. You’ve got mymother’s touch; you can make anything grow.” She lether hand rest on Lisa’s shoulder.

Lisa smiled at the earth. “Thanks. I’d—I miss Nanna,sometimes.”

“So do I, sweetie.” She let go of Lisa’s shoulder,wrapping herself once more in the iron courtesy her jobrequired. “See you later.”

Nanna had made everything grow. Her old house hadbeen surrounded by green things, even in winter. That,plus her sometimes abrasive attitude, had put people off,but Lisa had loved it. “So they think I’m the witch in thewoods,” Nanna had laughed with her one Halloween.“Who cares? I like being the witch in the woods. Maybethe men don’t look at me any more, but now they listen tome.”

Lisa held her hands up. Where the shadow of the shed

covered them, they looked old. Old as bone.

* * * *

“I heard from Ronnie Coleman’s mother,” Lisa’smother said as she passed the potatoes. “She says hishand’s healing, and he should be able to practice with thefootball team in the fall.”

“That’s too bad,” Lisa said.Her mother sighed. It was difficult to see her face; the

overhead light had lost a bulb again, and the remainingone was inadequate, sinking half of the table in shadows.“You’d prefer it if he never played again, wouldn’t you?”

“When you put it like that, yes.”Her mother was silent for a moment, and the echoes

of earlier conversations spoke for her. How could youbreak his hand? What on earth were you doing, trying tokill him? But all those had been said, and said again,until they’d sunk into the walls of the apartment likemildew. “I take it,” her mother said, “that you haven’tstarted your essay on nonviolence yet.”

She dug at the tablecloth with one ragged fingernail.“No.”

“They won’t let you back without it. Even if youfinish your suspension.”

“I don’t care. It’s a stupid topic.”A hint of iron came into her mother’s voice. “And one

you could stand to learn more about.”“I have learned more about it,” Lisa said, spearing a

potato on the end of her fork. “You got me all thosestupid books.”

Her mother shook her head. “Being stubborn is notgoing to make it any easier when you go back—”

She shoved her plate back and got up. “I’m nothungry any more.” Her mother covered her face with ashaky hand, but didn’t call her back.

The TV started up not long after, its drone the onlything to counteract Mrs. Kostianaya’s music. From thesound, it was one of the courtroom dramas that Lisa andher mother both loved, but Lisa stayed in her room. NoTV during the suspension, and if she was out there, thatmeant none for her mom as well.

She lay down, wrapped her pillow over her head, andimagined that it was Ronnie Coleman’s skull in thegarden, the stupid surprise on his face when she broke hishand now eternally wiped away. But as her eyes began toclose, the image changed, and it was her skull instead,eyesockets burning with a corrosive light.

* * * *

The twelfth skull was the one that gave her trouble.This one had a jaw attached, though “attached” wasn’tquite the right word for the way it hung askew. When shepoked at the skull with her gardening fork, it spun and bitthe fork, snapping the tines straight off.

Lisa didn’t think, just reversed the fork and whackedthe skull with it. The skull rocked to one side, and when itcame to rest looked almost chastened. She set it with theothers, jaw dangling over the border, and examined thedamage.

The fork was unusable, and the common shed lackedany replacement. She cussed for a while, mostly becauseit felt good to cuss where her mom couldn’t hear her, thencame out and gave Mrs. Kostianaya’s shed a long look.There was no sign of Mrs. Kostianaya herself; the shadeswere drawn tight, and if Lisa listened hard enough shecould hear the Mussorgsky again. What is that piece? shethought. Not the Fantasia one. The one the marchingband mangled at their concert last year, along withSwan Lake arranged for drums and horns.

Whatever, so long as it keeps her from lookingoutside.

The shed’s windows were opaque with grime. Lisasquinted at one of them, trying to make sense of the vagueshapes within, then gave the doorknob a tug. To her

surprise, it swung loose in her hand, and a musty,swampy smell enveloped her.

Her eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness,taking in the meager furnishings. A hearth took up the farend of the house, and beside it a contraption of woodenframes woven with cobwebs listed to one side.

This isn’t a shed, she thought as she stepped inside.This is someone’s house.

In the center of the room was a big stone tub, roundand as high as Lisa’s waist, with a long lump of the samekind of stone in it, polished smooth. Pestle, she thought,and a mortar, like the kind Mom uses for rosemary. Butwhy so big . . . or maybe I’ve gotten small . . .

A dark stain lay at the bottom of the mortar. Lisastared at it, then, as a hollow wind swept around her,turned and fled.

Once outside, the sunlight burned away some of herpanic away. She bent over and braced her hands on herknees, breathing slowly.

“So this is where you’ve been.”She jerked upright, one hand snatching up the trowel

from the patio table before she could think. A lumpy boystood on the far side of the fence, hands in the pockets ofhis letter jacket. His sneer, if nothing else, was familiar.Her memory extended a name: Jason something, junior

varsity. Oh, hell, she thought.Jason’s grin widened. “Coleman’s not happy with

you.”“That’s funny,” Lisa said. “I’m very happy. Only way

I could be happier is if I’d broken both his hands.” Shestepped to block his view of the skulls, very aware of theirgazes at her back.

The grin disappeared, but the sneer remained.“Coleman’s got plans for you,” he said, taking a stepcloser to the fence. “Teachers can’t help you, principalwon’t, and you can’t stay with the other girls forever, nomatter how they’re acting. Once you get back, we’recoming for you.”

“See if I care,” she shot back, then paused, replayinghis words. “They’re not giving in any more, are they?”she said. “The other girls aren’t putting up with yourbullshit any more. Not after they heard what I did.”

Jason’s face twisted in momentary fury and wasinsufficiently covered by his attempt at scorn. “They willonce we’re done with you,” he spat. “The whole teamwants a piece of you for what you did to him. It’ll be justlike with that little slut, only you’ll be awake for thewhole thing.”

Lisa threw the trowel overhand as hard as she could.It grazed his arm—her aim was off—but he yelled as if

it’d broken a bone. “You tell them that when I’m donewith them, they’ll wish I’d just broken their hands!” sheshouted. “You tell them that I’m going to smash opentheir empty heads and kick their balls so hard they’ll betasting scrotum for a week! You tell them—”

“Lisa!” Her mother stood framed in the back door.Lisa swallowed her words, choking on them. Her motherglanced at Jason. “Are you all right? Get inside, Lisa.”

Seething, she did so. The apartment was dull andquiet, so quiet that she could hear the placatory tone ofher mother’s voice. She kicked the garbage can over, thencursed and spent the next few minutes cleaning up themess.

Her mother came in just as she got the last of thepotato peels. “I convinced him not to tell his father.That’s all you need right now, another mark on yourrecord.”

“Another mark—Mom, did you even hear—”“I didn’t need to hear it, Lisa!” She dropped her purse

on the counter and placed her hands flat against thetabletop. “You can’t afford this, and neither can I! Do youknow what I found out today?”

Lisa took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “Whatdid you find out?”

“Todd Pierce. Two months ago. His father said he lost

three teeth.”Lisa exhaled. “There was this freshman girl,” she

said. Her mother’s expression didn’t change. “He keptspiking her punch when she wasn’t looking. It was herfirst party, so she didn’t know what it was supposed totaste like. Two more and she’d have been out cold, andhe’d have dragged her off to the back room.”

Her mother nodded slowly. “Glossing over for themoment the fact that you were at a party with alcohol—without my knowledge, apparently—can I ask why youthen found it necessary to attack him?”

“So he wouldn’t do it again.”“And did she thank you for coming to her rescue?”Lisa glared at the floor. “No.” But they’re not giving

in now. Not after I showed them how to fight.Coleman’s got plans for you.Her mother sighed, then dragged a chair from behind

the table and sank down into it, rocking as its uneven legstook her weight. “Lisa, you’re turning eighteen thissummer. You’re not going to be a juvenile any more, andif you keep doing this sort of thing then you can bearrested for assault.”

“And what Todd did—what he had planned wasn’tassault?”

“Did Ronnie Coleman assault anyone?”

No, Lisa thought. He just slipped something into hisgirlfriend’s drink and then passed her around to the restof the football team. But Sherri had begged her not to tellanyone, and so Lisa stayed silent.

“Lisa, I understand you have these . . . chivalrousimpulses. But you have to hold yourself back. You haveto keep something for yourself. You may already haveruined your chances to get into a good college; pleasedon’t make it any worse.” She took a breath, then pausedand held out her hands. “There are nicer ways to go aboutdefending people.”

“Nice? Nice?”“Somebody has to be willing to be nice,” her mother

insisted. “Otherwise it just becomes a vicious cycle.”“Did being nice to Dad get you any more child

support?”Fury blazed in her mother’s eyes—and just as quickly

burnt out. “No. But it meant that he couldn’t have medeclared unfit to raise you.” Her lips were thin andbloodless. “I had to make that choice, Lisa. I don’t regretit one bit.”

“And I don’t regret beating the snot out of RonnieColeman. Or Todd Pierce. Or anybody else.” Shestomped over to the door. “Fuck nice, Mom.”

“You are not going outside this apartment—”

“I’m just going to the fucking garden!” Her voicebroke on the last word, and she slammed the door behindher.

Mrs. Kostianaya was on the stairs. Lisa sniffledfuriously. “What do you want?”

“You’ve got the right of it, girl. I know, I hear.” Shepointed her cane up the stairs. “Come.”

Lisa glanced over her shoulder, but the door remainedshut.

“Nice.” Mrs. Kostianaya snorted as they wentupstairs. “You think the rest of those girls, the ones likeyou, all got out of the woods being nice? Nice isn’t sameas blessed. Nice I could stand; I could never standblessings.” She unlocked the door and waited for Lisa.

Her apartment was as crammed full of things as thehut had been bare. Black and gold lacquered boxes linedevery shelf, brilliant with firebirds or dancing women ormen stumbling through snow. A tiny, staticky TV garbledat her from the corner, almost lost among the swags of redcloth hung over the wall. Tea sets jostled each other forroom on the shelf above it. It didn’t look as thoughanything had ever been thrown away in this apartment,and few things looked used.

Mrs. Kostianaya stumped past her, then spun andglared at Lisa. “You turn your back. I don’t want you

seeing where I keep it.”Obediently, Lisa turned to face the wall. A stereo

system at least as old as she was took up most of abookshelf, and above it another lacquered tray showed anold woman riding in something like a tiny boat orbathtub, whacking the air with a stone club . . .

“Found it,” grunted Mrs. Kostianaya. Lisa turned tosee her sitting in a recliner, a box as long as her armacross her lap. Stuffing from the chair sprayed out toeither side of her head, giving her the look of a madscientist or a broken-haloed angel. “Every time you cameto me, you and the other Vassilisas, you asked for fire.Fire for your stepmother, fire for your stepsisters, who’dlet their light go out. Always I had some to spare, so youcould go home with a skull full of flame, ready to burnaway the badness. Always I sent you back to get rid ofyou and your blessings, sent you with your fire and yourlearning.”

Lisa was ready to leave, but the word skull kept her.She edged forward, away from the clinging draperies, butstopped when she saw Mrs. Kostianaya flinch back.

“I know you could take it.” Mrs. Kostianaya clutchedthe box, her long nails scratching at it like maddenedmice. “I know you could do it, take the house and the fireand all. But you won’t. Because you Vassilisas, you know

youth better now. Once you choose the fire, is no goingback. No youth, no mother, no children, no man, only thefire.”

She sighed and stroked the box’s lid. “Your mamahas it right. You have to keep something for yourself. Iknow, I hear. Don’t you look shocked!” She thumped thebox and raised a clawlike hand. “Used to be I could hearanything in my woods, anything I wanted to . . . But shehas it right. I thought, one day the fire will all be gone,the beautiful, stupid girls will take it all, and I won’t haveany . . . I won’t go begging like them. I won’t. I deserveit. They don’t.”

Lisa stirred. “Why?”Mrs. Kostianaya blinked, then looked down. “They

don’t. Because they’re stupid. Did stupid things.”“Doesn’t mean they don’t deserve—what you’ve got

to give.” Lisa paused, not entirely sure what she wasarguing for. “Being stupid shouldn’t mean a deathsentence.”

“Pfah.” Mrs. Kostianaya worried at her lower lip.“Because I’m old. That’s why I deserve it. Sick of giving.I wanted one for me.” She turned the box toward Lisa andopened it. “So I kept one for me.”

Lisa looked into the box. It was full of gray dust. Fora second fragments swirled together to form what might

have been the orbit of an eyesocket, but it collapsed in onitself, too tired to move. “That’s . . . very prudent of you.”

“Pfah. Always hated prudent. Always hated nice.Always hated you.” She closed the box with a snap anddumped it on the floor. “Give me the days when I couldfly,” she muttered, getting up and shoving past Lisa to thestereo, “when generals came to me for flawless schemes,when warlords stabled my horses. I worked so hard, Ideserve this now, I’m old and weak . . . ”

The too-familiar cadence of Mussorgsky thumpedfrom the stereo. Lisa glanced at the record sleeve where itlay, the pseudo-Russian drawings. Pictures at anExhibition, it read, and two-thirds of the way down thename of a movement had been circled.

The little hut on hen’s legs. The house of the oldwitch.

“Go away, Vassilisa,” Mrs. Kostianaya said. Tearsran down her face, sinking deep into the creases. “Goaway and stop reminding me what I was.”

Lisa closed the door behind her, not soon enough toavoid hearing Mrs. Kostianaya’s dry, cracked sobs.

* * * *

She lay awake till late, staring at the ceiling and

trying to think. Her mother hadn’t come out of her roomwhen she returned, but the sound of the TV started upshortly after Lisa closed her bedroom door.

You have to keep something back. For college. Foryourself.

Nanna didn’t keep anything back. Nanna said anddid what she wanted.

Nanna’s dead.She closed her eyes and pressed her hands over them.

Something whistled outside her window. She got up tolook and saw Jason out in the alley. He grinned. We’ll bewaiting, he mouthed. Lisa pulled the blinds over thewindow without speaking.

Eleven o’clock came and went. Her mother had fallenasleep on the couch again. Lisa went out and pulled ablanket over her mother, but left the TV on.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said. Her mother smiled andsnuggled deeper into the blankets. It’s not enough, shethought. She’ll never know you were sorry.

I’ll know. She kissed her mother on the forehead, thenstood up, hearing a new murmur, this one from outside.

The skulls were waiting for her. Someone had putthem on stakes now, in a circle around the hut, or perhapsthey had grown that way. No—not a circle, she realized.There was a gate, a gap, leaving the circle incomplete.

Some of the skulls had grown jawbones; all could speak.Where is my daughter? cried one. I trusted my husband,where is my daughter?

Years of taking fists to the stomach, the arms, theface, said another, and when I finally slapped him theyarrested me instead.

I was careful. I thought if I was careful I’d be safe. Ididn’t know he’d follow me to work. I didn’t know he’dwait for me just inside the parking garage.

The other skulls sobbed, shouted, snarled like dogs.Like bitches. Lisa glanced back at the dark apartmentbuilding, but there was no response from it.

Once you choose the fire, there’s no going back.The men don’t look at me, but they listen.Someone has to be willing to be nice.“No,” Lisa whispered, and the skulls paused to hear

her words. “Someone has to be willing to be angry.”She stepped into the circle, through to the door of

Mrs. Kostianaya’s hut. The dirt around it was furrowedand scratched, as if the hut had been restless in the night.A wooden stake as long as her arm barred the door. Lisalooked at it for a long moment, then put her hands to herjaw.

This is a dream, she thought as her face began to pullaway, leaving another, different face behind. This is not a

dream.It hurt, but no more than her knuckles had hurt after

Ronnie Coleman or Todd Pierce. No more than sex had,the first time, and like sex, she had the sense of giving upsomething—not her virginity, but something more. Tearsleaked from her eyes, but they evaporated quickly.

She pulled one head away, now a skull with shreds ofher hair clinging to it, and gingerly touched the wrinkledface beneath. Her face now.

Yaga, the skulls murmured, yaga.“Yes,” she whispered in her new voice, hoarse and

cracked but no less strong. She took the stake from thehut’s door and jammed her old skull atop it. Fire bloomedin its eyesockets, throwing diabolic shadows across theyard, and the skulls screamed in glee as fire sparked inthem as well.

She looked back once, first at the flickering televisionglow through her mother’s window, then at the curtainsof Mrs. Kostianaya’s windows, pulled tight against theworld. Sometimes you have to be the witch in the woods.So they’ll remember. So they know someone has fire togive them. The hut’s door opened to her, and she entered.

They’ll remember me, she thought as her hut lurchedto its feet and stalked away, fire following it.

Margaret Ronald’s fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy andIdeomancer. She is an alum of the Viable Paradise workshop and a memberof the Boston Area Science Fiction Writers’ Group. Originally from ruralIndiana, she now lives outside Boston.

RagazzoBruce McAllister

She had one blue eye and one white eye that wasblind. This fascinated the boy so much that he wouldstand on the back patio of his family’s house, whichoverlooked the little bay, and, pretending that he wasn’t,watch her wash their laundry in the cold metal sink. Whyit held him as it did, he didn’t know, but it did, and hecould watch her every morning because it was summer.In this country back-porch sinks didn’t have hot waterand her hands turned blue from the cold, blue like her eye,and this also held him at the corner of the house.

She was as old as his grandmother, but her hair waswhiter, white as her blind eye, and this was part of whatheld him. Even when she wasn’t there washing and hethought of her, everything was either white or blue in hismind, and there was a question he was supposed to askbut didn’t know what it was.

When she caught him watching, she always smiledand said, “Buon giorno, ragazzo.” Sometimes shecomplimented his eyes, but he knew that was just akindness. His eyes weren’t at all interesting.

When she caught him looking, he would pretend hewas untangling his fishing line. He always had it in hishand as an excuse, the sky-blue 5-pound line strongenough to catch anything in the little bay that glittered inthe sun below the house. When she caught him looking,he would start playing with the line, tangling it up if hehad to, to give him reason.

She would smile. The blue eye would blink and thewhite eye would stare. “Buon giorno, ragazzo,” shewould say. Some of her teeth were missing, but ratherthan making her smile ugly, they made it beautiful—because they did not bother her.

* * * *

Her daughter, who came with her once a week to helpthe boy’s grandmother with the ironing, sometimes teasedthe old woman. He’d heard her do it twice at least.Mal’occhio, the daughter would say to her mother whenthe old woman looked at her too long, waiting for ananswer to a simple question, or just thinking. It was athing the people in the villages here sometimes thoughtabout, the boy knew. Mal’occhio. Bad eye. Evil eye. Sickeye.

“Che mal’occhio!” the daughter would say. “Devi

domandare di Dio altro occhio azzurro, Mamma.” Youshould ask God for another blue eye, Mother.

She would even, when she was angry, call the oldwoman “Strega!” This was something the people herethought about, too, he knew. Witches. Stregheria. The oldwoman who lived in the castle above the cove and spatphlegm at the children was one, his schoolmates insisted.The two old women who poisoned the cats in the olivegroves were, too, they said. There couldn’t be this many,the boy knew; and besides, it was not a nice thing to callyour mother.

But the daughter, whose named was Livia, loved hermother, whose name was Elisa. That was obvious. Thedaughter smiled just like her, and in that smile was love.But in the daughter’s teasing he also heard fear, just alittle, not enough to ruin love, but enough to be heard.Fear of what? he wondered. Other people? What theymight think of an old woman with a blind white eye?Certainly not of her mother. By teasing, the daughtercould let her mother know she loved her while letting thefear speak and, by speaking, go away.

Was there an opposite of mal’occhio, he wondered.Was there a bell’occhio—a “beautiful eye,” an “eye oflove,” “God’s eye”? Would it be a blue eye—blue so thatfear might be sent away?

* * * *

That morning Elisa caught him looking at her again,and again he looked down and started playing with hisline.

“Buon giorno, ragazzo.”“Buon giorno, Signora.” He did not look up. She

knew what he was doing. How many times could a boytangle his line? Even a stupid one couldn’t do it everyday. And why did he always stand there, at the corner ofthe house, where he could see her and she him? But shedidn’t mind. She smiled every time she caught him, as ifa smile were the easiest thing in the world to make, andboth of her eyes would look at him as he fumbled with hisline and, by fumbling, sometimes actually get it tangled.

That morning, though, she looked at him and alsosaid, “Che commincia commincia.”

He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “Scusi?”“Che commincia commincia,” she said again. What

begins begins.He didn’t know what to say, so he nodded and

returned to his line, keeping his eyes down so that shewould return to her washing and he could think.

What begins begins.He didn’t know what it meant, but she’d said it with a

smile and that was really what mattered.

* * * *

That night, when his father returned from the big citytwenty minutes north—where the Navy had a laboratoryand his father was in charge—his family sat down todinner, which, as always, his grandmother had made.Tonight was veal and spaghetti, and as they ate theycould look down through the dining-room window at thelittle bay with its white lights and the old castle with itsone red light.

When his grandmother tried to give him some of herveal, telling him that she didn’t really want it, his mother—her eyes flashing—said, “Don’t, Elizabeth.”

“Why not?” his grandmother asked. She wasaccustomed to this and spoke calmly.

“Because you spoil him.”His grandmother laughed. “I spoiled you, Dorothy,

didn’t I?”Any argument infuriated his mother—who was a

teacher but could not teach here because she did not knowthe language—and so she stood up, and, as always, beganshouting.

What begins begins, the boy thought, but it wasn’t

true. This was not a beginning. His mother had alwaysshouted.

He looked back to the window, down at the little bayand tried to be there, but could not. He felt like wood. Hefelt like a color that wasn’t a color, and his mother’sshouting filled him, as always, with heaviness. He lookedat his father, but his father would not look back. He tried—with his eyes—to make his father look at him; but hisfather, hair thinning, eyes pale, and feeling just as heavy,would not.

The boy had heard his father speak up only once whenhis mother had been angry—he’d been ten or eleven—saying gently, “Now, now, Dorothy. No one is saying youhaven’t done a good job. You have done—” His motherhad turned on his father then, as if these simple, quietwords had been uttered cruelly. She had stepped up to hisfather, who was much taller, and, with those exotic eyesof hers flashing as if she might hit him, said: “You’vealways been spineless, Bill. If you were more of a man,your son wouldn’t be the spoiled imitation of you that heis. I don’t know why I stay.” She’d stormed from theroom as always, and the boy had heard his father start tobreathe again in the very same instant he had. As theytook their breaths together, the boy had looked at hisfather, wanting him to look back so that he could tell him

—with just his eyes—that he knew how it felt to be woodand colorless and so heavy, like nothing. To thank him,too, if eyes could do that. But his father wouldn’t look athim and from that moment on it had been that way.

Had his uncle Matthew, his mother’s twin brother—who’d died when the boy was ten and who’d also had“Indian” eyes like hers—been so angry, too, alwaysshouting and sometimes hitting? The boy had wonderedthis more than once. Twins were often the same, weren’tthey? His uncle had been a big man, he remembered, andthat would have been more frightening, wouldn’t it? He’dbeen a doctor, but one that everyone loved. The boyremembered his grandmother saying this. “His patientsgive him presents every Christmas, John—so many thathe doesn’t know what to do with them. He just laughsabout it, and gives them away.” It delighted hisgrandmother to tell the story. She loved her son, that wasobvious.

Their eyes had been the same, yes. This the boyremembered, too. “Matthew and Dorothy both have theirfather’s eyes,” his grandmother would say, liking thisstory too. “In the oil fields of Long Beach the men wouldcall him ‘Chief’ because his eyes made him look like anIndian. He was born in Oklahoma Territory. Hisgrandfather was Chocktaw. Don’t you ever forget that.”

The boy said he wouldn’t. That was why he had a bookabout the Chocktaw, how they hunted and fished. “Itmakes their eyes look a little Oriental, don’t you think?But the way your mother’s eyes flash when she’s angry,that’s hers and no one else’s. Matthew’s eyes flashed, too,but they were happy.”

Angry—as if the world were not enough, the boy toldhimself, trying not to hear the shouting—as if somethingwere missing from the world or her, and it hurt, soeveryone should hurt with her, too —

Would a doctor be allowed to shout like his motherdid? It would scare the patients, nurses and other doctors.It would make the patients sicker and the doctor would befired, wouldn’t he? His uncle hadn’t screamed the boy feltsure—and he certainly hadn’t hit—but if he hadn’t, thenwhy did his sister act this way?

And it got worse when Matthew died, hisgrandmother had said once, and the boy hadn’t knownwhat this meant. If you lost someone you loved, you cried.You were sad. You didn’t shout and hit. That was nothow love behaved.

* * * *

“You didn’t spoil me,” his mother was shouting.

“You spoiled Matthew. You did everything you could toundermine me in Daddy’s eyes. Matthew was the ‘chosenone’—”

The boy moved his right leg, which was cramping.His mother heard it and turned.

“And now you spoil him—this thing I’m supposed tocall my son—as if he were your chosen one now.”

The boy felt his skin billow out in a chill, his brainempty into his stomach. He watched these things insidehimself because he could not see anything in the room.How can you see when you have no body, when there isnothing—no head, no eyes—to see with?

“Dorothy,” the grandmother was saying gently,“please sit down.”

This was all his mother needed—a reason. Shegrabbed her plate with its spaghetti and threw it acrossthe room, as she’d done more than once, and it struck thewall. The spaghetti hung for a moment and dropped.Outside the lights on the little bay were like stars, but theboy felt nothing, for he was nothing. How could he bewhen the only thing in this room was the rage?

He went to his room and lay on his bed in the darktrembling. How he could tremble, he didn’t know. He hadno body. He had no right to have one. If he closed his eyeshard enough he saw different colors, but they did not last.

He couldn’t hold onto them. He didn’t deserve to.Outside in the hallway he could hear her screaming at

his father:This is what I get for staying with you? and So I’m

the one who has to clean it up? and Why did we evenbother having a child?

But then he saw Elisa’s eye—not the white one thatmight, in the eyes of the villagers, be ill or evil, but theblue one, peaceful, blinking at him.

What begins begins, he heard her say, and, watchingthe eye watching him, he fell asleep.

* * * *

A few days later Elisa’s daughter opened thebathroom door and found him sitting on the toilet naked,reading two books, a simple one in their language aboutthe kinds of fish that lived in this bay, on this coast, theLigurian Sea, and another of his favorites, Fishing andHunting Ways of the Cherokee and Chocktaw. When shefirst opened the door, he wanted to die—to kill himselfbefore God or someone else could do it—but instead ofscreaming or twisting her face in contempt, as his motherwould have, the daughter laughed. It was a laugh thatsaid, “Everything is fine. Even the sight of a naked

twelve-year-old boy sitting on a toilet reading picturebooks is fine.”

As he put the book quickly in his lap to keep her fromseeing what he was—a boy—she said “Scusi!” andclosed the door. She laughed again in the hallway as shetold her mother what had happened, and then they bothlaughed; and he heard in their voices the love betweenthem, and also, to his amazement, what sounded likeaffection . . . for him.

* * * *

The next time he saw Elisa’s blue hands in the coldwater, he felt terrible. Her hands looked like hisgrandmother’s, but his grandmother’s had never beenblue. As he thought of his grandmother, he knew what heshould do. His grandmother was back in the States seeingdoctors for a “little problem”—that was how his parentshad put it—but if she’d been here she would certainlyhave said, “Get her hot water, John. Poor thing . . . .”

So he went to the kitchen sink, filled four pots withscalding water and brought them out to her quickly, in arush, saying, “Sue mani—come azzurre!” What bluehands you have! But the old woman shook her head,smiled the toothy smile, and in her language—which the

boy had learned well enough with his tutor the summerthey’d arrived—told him: “Thank you, but this is thetemperature my mother used, and her mother, andbesides, what’s wrong with blue? It’s the color of heaven,God’s eyes, the sky when fish aren’t biting, many things.”

Even as she spoke he was trying to pour the first potinto the sink, which was already full, and soap and waterspilled out, running down both of their legs. She woulduse the other pots later, she informed him, but he knewshe was just being courteous. She wouldn’t use them. Shedidn’t need them.

Maybe, he told himself, the cold water reminded herof her own mother, whom she’d loved and who’d lovedher. Her mother’s hands had been blue perhaps, too, fromthe cold—that was it—and seeing her own blue hands asshe washed the laundry every day made her feel that hermother was near, just as his grandmother’s sea shellsmade her feel near when she was gone.

Had her mother’s eyes been blue? he wondered. Sofew in this village had blues eyes. Was she—her family—from farther north, near the border? Were some of herpeople from another country? Questions like these filledhis head.

* * * *

“Can an ‘evil eye’ be blue?” the boy asked his tutorthat weekend, as they worked on his geography, the examfor which he would take when school began in a fewdays. His tutor, a small man who always seemeddisappointed, shook his head. “Why are you thinkingabout such things?”

“I am curious,” the boy answered. He didn’t like thetutor’s snobbery. For the tutor only certain things weregood enough to learn or think about, which was silly.

“The ‘evil eye’ is not a Northern idea,” his tutor wassaying with a sigh. “It comes from the South.”

“Can an ‘evil eye’ be blue?” the boy asked again.The tutor was silent.“Have boys in the village been teasing you?”“No.”“Then why ask such a question?”“I hear about mal’occhii; and since some people have

blue eyes—not many, but some do—I wonder about blueeyes.”

The tutor sighed again. “I suppose an ‘evil eye’ couldbe blue, but people in the South do not have blue eyes.They also do not have red hair like yours; but when theydo, it too is viewed as the devil’s work. You can see whyNortherners do not get along with Southerners, who arecrude and uneducated.”

* * * *

Red hair was the devil’s work? His mother wouldcertainly agree. In fact, even the thought of his hair nowmade him feel the way his mother’s shouting did, or theway he felt when she slapped him, or slapped anyone. Tobe evil in the eyes of God should make a boy want to die,shouldn’t it? To be evil in your mother’s eyes—wasn’tthat the same? Shouldn’t you wish to die?

Unable to think of anything but his hair, he did not gothe next morning to the corner of the house to watchElisa. He did not want to see her; he did not want to seeanyone. Had she also viewed him this way all along—theway Southerners would, and God? His hair? The devil’swork. Had everyone in the village, his friends andteachers at school, the couples and families walking alongthe waterfront every evening—all viewed him this way?The devil’s work.

He tried lying down in his bedroom to make his hair—the thought of it, the picture of it—go away. His fatherwas at work. His grandmother was still in the States, forher little problem, and his mother was probably talking tothe Contessa in her big villa down the road, where theywould talk for hours and his mother would sometimescome back happy. But it was if his mother were here now

and screaming at him, the way it felt, the hair on his head—like some creature he didn’t want to touch—and thepicture of it in his head—which he could not make leave.

The next day, as he left the house, Elisa appeared andsaid, “How is your fishing line?”

“I will not be fishing today.”“And why is that?”He wanted to say, “Because of my hair,” but because

that would sound silly he said, “I don’t like fishinganymore.”

She nodded, looking at him with both of her eyes, buthe felt nothing. There was nothing to feel.

“Come and help me, ragazzo,” she said.He wanted to say No. He didn’t want to be there with

her. He didn’t want her saying silly things like Whatbegins begins, which made him have to think too hard.He didn’t want to be with anyone. He wanted to take awalk up the old Etruscan cobblestone path through theolive groves, where he would be alone with his hair. “Ishould go to the store,” he said, “to buy some exam booksfor school.”

“You have time for that later. Give me a hand,Giovanni.”

She’d never called him by his name before. Justragazzo. Boy. He looked up at her face, saw the blue eye

was watching him, could not look away, and for amoment felt afraid.

A blue eye could indeed be mal’occhio, he realized,but felt the shiver pass.

* * * *

At the metal sink he stood quietly waiting for her totell him what to do, but she said nothing and just keptwashing. When he finally began to fidget, she said, “Ineed for you to catch me a fish, Giovanni, a spigola orbocca d’oro or cagnaccio. You know what these are.They’re in your book.”

He felt his face grow hot and looked away. Yes, theywere in his book.

“Will you do this for me?” He nodded.“Tomorrow is Friday,” she was saying. “It is the

birthday of the patron saint of this village. SantaFilomena, patroness of lost children, martyred when shewas your age—”

“Martyred?”“Killed—it doesn’t matter how—for being good of

heart, for saving the life of a child—and, some say, forbeing a witch.”

“Oh.”“She has been forgotten except in Liguria, where she

was born, and she is the patron saint of this town. I needto cook a fish tomorrow for dinner, for Livia and myself.Do this for me, Giovanni. Go to the rocks between thelido and the wharf, where no one fishes because of thewaves, and do your fishing there. Do it now. What beginsmust continue. You will be lucky—it will take you but anhour—and there will be no one there on the rocks tobother you, to make you think things you shouldn’t.”

He jumped. She had patted him on the head—on hishair—something she had also never done before.

“Later, you will meet friends,” she added.The old woman had never spoken to him like this—

ordering him around, bossing him, touching him, the wayhis mother did—and he wasn’t sure he liked it. And howdid she know about his hair? And what did What beginsmust continue mean? Was she getting too old to thinkclearly?

But he liked being asked to catch her a fish. Any boywould.

* * * *

It took him an hour—just as she’d said—to catch her

a bocca d’oro. Not a big one, but not a small one either—nine inches, maybe ten, enough for two people. It was thekind of fish the villagers liked—neither boney nor oily.He’d used a clam with his hook two feet from the weight,caught one and lost it, then caught the secondimmediately. It had fought him—croaked and fought,fought and croaked, the way this kind always did. Hisline had not tangled on him; and no one had been arounduntil he was heading up the brick path from the bakeryand its smells, past the sleeping cats and shards of glassimbedded on the high walls. There, as she’d also said,two boys came toward him. Tincani Giorgio and PerottoGianFelice, two boys from school. They seemed happy tosee him—to look at him, hair and all—and they hoped,they said, that he’d come to Tincani’s house soon to playcalcio. It’s been a long time, they said. They’d see him atschool, they added. Primo giorno—che peccato! Firstday of school—what a shame!

When they were gone, the feeling—that no one shouldsee him because he had no right to be seen—haddisappeared. It would return, he knew. He would have togo home to the shouting and the hitting; but for a momenthe did not feel it.

* * * *

He put the fish in wax paper in the refrigerator to keepit fresh, and as he did, felt his heart start to knock. If hismother saw the fish, she would be annoyed. Stinking upthe refrigerator and Making life difficult for everyoneand Don’t you ever think of others?—whatever felt rightfor her to say.

The next morning, before he left for school, he waitedfor Elisa. His mother had not found the fish. He had put itup near the light, at the back of the smallest shelf, and shehad missed it as she grabbed leftovers for dinner. Whenhe heard Elisa’s footsteps on the back patio, he reachedinto the refrigerator and grabbed it; but as he did, heardthe sound and turned. It was his mother. Her dark eyes—her own mal’occhii—held him as she said, “What areyou doing, John?”

“I caught a fish yesterday for Elisa. She asked me tocatch one for her.”

“Why didn’t you give it to her yesterday?”“She was gone when I got home, so I put it in the

refrigerator. I wrapped it up tight.”She rolled her eyes, angry already. At him. At his

father. That his grandmother was gone and couldn’t fixmeals. That she couldn’t teach because she didn’t knowthe language. That everyone was stupid and the worldunfair—especially this boy standing in front of her who

hadn’t yet given her reason enough to start shouting,though he certainly would.

“It’s small,” she said. “Couldn’t you have caught abigger one for her? She does so much for this family. Thatwould have been kinder, don’t you think?”

What he wanted to say then would give her the reasonshe wanted, but he couldn’t help himself. In his mind hesaw Elisa’s face, the blind white eye and the blue one,and heard her say again, “I need to have you catch me afish, Giovanni. What begins must continue.”

“I think,” he heard himself say, “that she’ll probablylike it whatever size it is.”

The world stopped. His mother stared at him.“What did you say?”His heart thundered. “I said I think she’ll probably

like the fish whatever size it is.”She was smiling, but it was her hideous smile—the

one that was happy because she now had reason.“You do, do you?” she said. “You think your mother

hasn’t lived? You think you don’t hurt people with yourthoughtlessness—that you don’t hurt us all, even yourgrandmother—who loves you—and your father—whosacrifices so much—when you think only of yourself? Butyou don’t have to, do you. You’re the special one—”

She was doing what she needed to do—to feel what

she needed to feel—but still he could not breathe, and thistime he knew she would hit him. He hadn’t given hermuch, but she was turning it into something because shewanted and needed to—something that would let her hit.

He didn’t hear her words when she did. He didn’tneed to. He’d heard them before or words just like them,and what mattered was her hand—the open hand—moving toward his face, reminding him, as it struck, ofthe body he always wished he didn’t have.

She hit him once and was going to hit him again, butthe door opened behind him, the one to the porch; and,though he didn’t turn, he heard Elisa’s voice.

“No, signora,” Elisa said.He watched his mother’s face change—taken over, as

sometimes happened, by another kind of smile, the onethat said, “Thank you for your concern, but everything isfine—everything in this family is fine and always willbe”—but then he saw the smile collapse, saw that thistime she was not going to pretend, not with this oldwoman, who was, after all, their maid and needed theirmoney and was interfering with something that was justnot her business.

His mother said, “Please leave us, Elisa,” and wavedthe old woman away. “John and I are having aconversation.”

“No, signora,” Elisa said again, and the boy turned atlast to look at her. His mother had him by the arm withher left hand, which was shaking; but her right hand, theone she used for hitting, was free. The hand wanted to dowhat it needed to do—hit him—but it could not, and thismade her anger even greater. The eyes flashed and flashedagain.

“I am asking you to leave us, Elisa.”“I cannot, Signora, if you are going to hit the boy

again.”Elisa was speaking English, and the boy did not

understand how. She was a maid. She’d gone toelementary school, that was all. Her husband, a mechanic,had died in the war. He’d had spoken Italian and maybesome French, but nothing else. Her daughter spoke tenwords of English, no more.

He could hear her speaking English, and yet he couldnot see her mouth moving as she spoke. But he wasn’treally looking at her mouth; he was looking at her eyes,the blue seeing one and the blind white one, and he waslooking because she wanted him to. Look at my eyes,Giovanni, he heard her say. See what I know.

“This is not your business,” his mother was saying.“What kills love is the business of love,” Elisa

answered.

At these words, his mother froze, and time stoppedagain, and again he could not breathe. His mother wasspeechless, her eyes filling with night and fire. She wasstepping toward the old woman.

He had seen his mother hit other people, but it hadalways been family and therefore safe.

The old woman, back curved from age and all thelaundry, was small, his mother taller and younger and fullof anger’s strength.

Though she still held his arm, he stepped betweenthem, faced her and did not look away. He was closeenough that it would be, he hoped, easier for her to hithim. For a moment he thought she might she reacharound him anyway to hit the old woman because shecould—because the old woman was just a maid—but no,he saw at last, she wouldn’t. He was too close. She wouldindeed hit him again—to punish Elisa, to show her whowas in charge, and how dare she forget.

As his mother raised the hand, the old woman said:“Signora!”It was a voice he had never heard, a growl and a

thunder. It was not the Elisa he knew. It was not the Elisahis mother knew, and as they both looked over at thevoice, his mother saw the old woman’s eye at last, just ashe did. Not the blind white eye that saw more than it

should in this world, but the blue one, the one full of skyand God and fish and affection; and it was the mostterrifying thing he had ever seen.

As his mother looked, the blue eye took her.What is the opposite of mal’occhio? he was thinking

to himself as it happened, as if he’d known it might butcould never have hoped it would.

His mother did not move. She could not move. Shestared back at the blue eye (bell’occhio, occhio di Dio,occhio divino terribile) and started to change. Her bodychanged. She began to shrink before his eyes and quickly—from the woman she was now to younger woman, herhair darker, to a teenager too pretty for her own good, to achild with those same Indian eyes, wide-eyed andrebellious, and finally to —

An infant, a tiny thing curled naked and dusty on thekitchen floor.

It was real, he knew. The infant was covered withwhite wax and a little blood—just born. A piece of darkchord hung from its belly. It was mewling like a kitten.He was frightened. Would it die there on the floor?Should he pick it up? Why wasn’t Elisa doingsomething? She knew about babies. She had to.

But when he looked at the old woman’s face, he heardher say without moving her lips: See it as I have seen it.

What begins must have an end. He saw the patience inthe blue eye, the lack of surprise, and this too told him itwas real, what was happening on the floor. She hadknown it would happen. She had seen it happen before,and she had made it happen—she and her blue eye—andthere was nothing to be done except wait. Strega, hethought. Stregheria.

This was, after all, what happened when you lookedinto an eye that could show you what you needed to seeeven if you didn’t want to see it.

The infant on the kitchen floor cried, tiny hands like arubber doll’s, dark and red and frantic, and the boy foundhe was crying with it. It was a girl—he could see that—and it felt so alone.

The infant quieted, and for a moment he thought itwas dead, and the thought filled him with a terribleemptiness. But when he looked at Elisa’s face, he saw thepatience and calm, and he understood:

The infant was younger now, that was all. It hadn’tbeen born yet. It was still in its mother’s belly—hisgrandmother’s belly—and as he looked, he saw anotherinfant beside it on the floor, touching it—her brother, hertwin, the thing not yet born that would become his uncleMatthew.

As he stared, he saw even more—saw everything the

blue eye wanted him to see: How his mother and hisuncle had been together inside his grandmother for a verylong time (why had he never thought of this?). How theyhad heard each other’s heartbeats all that time. How,touching like this, they had never been alone. How hismother would become what she was, how it would getworse when her brother died, and how one day she wouldneed, for everyone’s sake, to look into an old woman’seye.

Strega . . . .The two infants on the floor, dusty and dirty, made no

sound, but one—the brother, he was sure—put its arm onthe other’s leg, and this was where it all began. Whatbegins begins. When they were born, the girl would misshim forever. She would feel incomplete, never knowingwhat a boy’s blue eyes or a fish given in love or the quietdevotion of a man might mean. Life would be empty forher in endless grief.

When he looked up once more at Elisa’s face—atboth of her eyes, one as blue as his own, the other blindbut not really—he wondered what God’s eyes looked like,as she said to him again in English, her mouth again notmoving: I need to be here while she changes back,Giovanni. I need to be here when she takes her firstbreath of life and realizes that her brother is gone, that

she will in her life suffer as we all suffer when what welove is taken from us and we feel, though it is a lie, thatwe are nothing without it.

He understood. She would stay while his motherbecame again the woman they both knew, and he wouldgo to the back patio to wait for them, and try to breatheagain.

* * * *

When Elisa came out to the porch at last, she smiledand took the fish from him, speaking once more thelanguage of this country. “Thank you, Giovanni. It is nota big fish, but bocca d’oro are sweet and you kept itfresh. Have you ever had dateri? You should ask yourfather to take your family to Old Town for dateri withfish. My mother used to cook it and I will cook it for Liviatonight—in honor of Santa Filomena.”

He looked at her mouth. It was moving with thewords, and because it was, he could breathe again. Hermouth was moving as she said:

“They may be blue, Giovanni, but you have yourmother’s eyes. A little Asiatic—because Indian eyes are.Fiery, too—if given a chance. Do not waste them onsadness.”

He nodded. He would not, he promised.

* * * *

When a few days later his grandmother—who’dreturned at last from her little problem in the States—made them dinner, giving each person at the table a bigpiece of chicken, his mother was the one to offer the boysome of hers, because, as she put it, “It’s way too muchfor me, John. Really.” For a moment the boy stoppedbreathing, but then saw that his mother was smiling, andit was not her hideous smile. His grandmother wasstaring at her, not believing. His father was staring, too,and looking over at the boy for the first time in a longtime. As the boy took the piece of chicken from hismother, thanking her politely, he saw the difference: asecond pair of eyes looked out from his mother’s,identical in color and just as exotic, but a man’s, with heragain forever.

Bruce McAllister began writing fantasy and science fiction at about the sameage as the protagonist of this story, and two years later made his first sale to avery kind editor, Frederik Pohl at Worlds of IF. With the exception of a longhiatus in the 90’s during which words just didn’t seem enough, he has beenpublishing short f&sf and literary fiction ever since. About this story he says,

‘There was indeed a maid with one white eye and one blue one who was kindto a boy in a little fishing village in Italy, and now, forty years later, I’mconvinced that all human suffering—psyche and body both—comes fromone terrible misunderstanding or another. I’m also convinced, as I’m suremost writers who write long enough are, that all fiction—even the fantastic—is 100%-autobiographical.”

Lessons With Miss GrayTheodora Goss

That summer, we were reporters: intrepid, like MollyMcBride of the Charlotte Observer, who had ridden anelephant in the Barnum and Bailey circus, and gone up ina balloon at the Chicago World’s Fair, and whosestagecoach had been robbed by Black Bart himself.Although she had told him it would make for a betterstory, Black Bart had refused to take her purse: he wouldnot rob a lady.

We were sitting in the cottage at the bottom of theBeauforts’ garden, on the broken furniture that was keptthere. Rose, on the green sofa with the torn upholstery,was chewing on her pencil and trying to decide whetherher yak, on the journey she was undertaking through theHimalayas, was a noble animal of almost humanintelligence, or a surly and unkempt beast that she couldbarely control. Emma, in an armchair with a sagging seat,was eating gingerbread and writing the society column, inwhich Ashton had acquired a number of Dukes andDuchesses. Justina, in another armchair, which did notmatch—but what was Justina doing there at all? She was

two years older than we were, and a Balfour, of theBalfours who reminded you, as though you had forgotten,that Lord Balfour had been granted all of Balfour Countyby James I. And Justina was beautiful. We had beenstartled when she had approached us, in the gymnasiumof the Ashton Ladies’ Academy, where all of us exceptMelody went to school, and said, “Are you writing anewspaper? I’d like to help.” There she was, sitting in thearmchair, which was missing a leg and had to be proppedon an apple crate. It leaned sideways like a sinking ship.She was writing in a script that was more elegant thanany of ours—Rose’s page was covered with crossingsout, and Emma’s with gingerbread crumbs—aboutSerenity Sage, who was, at that moment, trapped in theCaliph’s garden, surrounded by the scent of roses andaware that at any moment, the Caliph’s eunuchs mightfind her. She would always, afterward, associate the scentof roses with danger. How, Justina wondered, wouldSerenity escape? How would she get back to Rome,where the Cardinal, who had hired her, was waiting?Beside him, as he sat in a secret chamber beneath thecathedral, were a trunk filled with gold coins and hishostage: her lover, the revolutionary they called TheMask. We did not, of course, insist that everything in ournewspaper be true. How boring that would have been.

And Melody was sitting on the other end of the sofa,reading the Charlotte Observer, trying to imitate theadvertising.

“Soap as white as, as—” she said. “As soap.”“As the snows of the Himalayas,” said Rose, who had

decided that her yak was surly, and the sunlight on theslopes blinding. But surely her guide, who was intrepid,would lead her to the fabled Forbidden Cities.

“As milk,” said Emma. “I wish I had milk. Callie’sgingerbread is always dry.”

“For goodness sake,” said Rose. “Can’t you think ofanything other than food?”

“As the moon, shining over the sullied streets ofLondon,” said Melody, in the voice she used to recitepoetry in school.

“What do you know about London?” said Emma.“Make it the streets of Ashton.”

“I don’t think they’re particularly sullied,” said Rose.“Not in front of your house, Miss Rose,” said Melody,

in another voice altogether. Rose kicked her.“As the paper on which a lover has written his letter,”

said Justina. Serenity Sage was sailing down the Tiber.“If he’s written the letter, it’s not going to be white,”

said Emma. “Obviously.”And then we were silent, because no one said

“obviously” to a Balfour, although Justina had notnoticed. The Mask was about to take off his mask.

“I don’t understand,” said Melody, in yet anothervoice, which made even Justina look up. “Lessons inwitchcraft,” she read, “with Miss Emily Gray.Reasonable rates. And it’s right here in Ashton.”

“Do you think it’s serious?” asked Emma. “Do youthink she’s teaching real witchcraft? Not just the fakestuff, like Magical Seymour at the market in Brickleford,who pulls Indian-head pennies out of your ears?”

“You’re getting crumbs everywhere,” said Rose, whowas suddenly and inexplicably feeling critical. “Whyshouldn’t it be real? You can’t put false advertising in anewspaper. My father told me that.”

And suddenly we all knew, except Justina, who wasrealizing the Cardinal’s treachery, that we were no longerreporters. We were witches.

* * * *

“Where did you say she lived?” asked Melody. Wewere walking down Elm Street, in a part of town thatMelody did not know as well as the rest of us.

“There,” said Emma. We didn’t understand howEmma managed to know everything, at least about

Ashton. Although her mother was a whirlpool of gossip:everything there was to know in Ashton made its wayinevitably to her. She had more servants than the rest ofus: Mrs. Spraight, the housekeeper, as well as the negroservants, Callie, who cooked, and Henry, who was bothgardener and groom. Rose’s mother made do with a negrohousekeeper, Hannah, and Justine, who lived with hergrandmother, old Mrs. Balfour, had only Zelia, a Frenchmulatto who didn’t sleep in but came during the day tohelp out. And Melody—well, Melody was Hannah’sniece, and she had no servants at all. She lived with heraunt and her cousin Coralie, who taught at the negroschool, across the train tracks. We didn’t know how shefelt about this—we often didn’t know what Melody felt,and when we asked, she didn’t always answer.

“Don’t you think it’s unfair that you have to go to thatnegro school, with only a dusty yard to play in? Don’t youthink you should be able to go to the Ashton Lady’sAcademy, with us? Don’t you think—” And her facewould shut, like a curtain. So we didn’t often ask.

“The white house, with the roses growing on it,” saidEmma. “It used to be the Randolph house. She was awitch too, Mrs. Randolph, at least that’s what I heard.She died, or her daughter died, or somebody, andafterward all the roses turned as red as blood.”

“They’re pink,” said Melody.“Well, maybe they’ve faded. I mean, this was a long

time ago, right?” Rose looked at the house. The whitetrim had been freshly painted, and at each window therewere lace curtains. “Are we going in, or not?”

“It looks perfectly respectable,” said Emma. “Not atall like a witch’s house.”

“How do you know what a witch’s house looks like?”asked Melody.

“Everyone knows what a witch’s house looks like,”said Rose. “I think you’re all scared. That’s why you’renot going in.”

At that, we all walked up the path and to the frontdoor, although Justina had forgotten where we were andhad to be pulled. Justina often forgot where we were, orthat the rest of us were there at all. Rose raised her handto the knocker, which was shaped like a frog—the firstsign we had seen that a witch might, indeed, be within—waited for a moment, then knocked.

“Good afternoon,” said a woman in a gray dress, withwhite hair. She looked like your grandmother, the onewho baked you gingerbread and knitted socks. Or like aschoolteacher, as proper as a handkerchief. Behind herstood a ghost.

* * * *

That summer, we each had a secret that we werekeeping from the others.

Rose’s secret was that she wanted to fly. She hadbooks hidden under her bed, books on birds and balloonsand gliders, on everything that flew. She read every storythat she could find about flight—Icarus, and the Island ofLaputa, and the stories of Mr. Verne. There was no reasonto keep this a secret—the rest of us would not haveparticularly cared, although Melody might have said thatif God intended us to fly, he would have given us wings.Her aunt had said that to a passing preacher, who hadtold the negro people to rise up, rise up, as equal childrenof God. And Justina might have looked even more absentthan usual, with the words “away, away” singing throughher head. But Rose would have been miserable if she hadtold: it was the only secret she had, and it gave her days,and especially nights, when she was exploring the surfaceof the moon, meaning. And what if her mother found out?Elizabeth Caldwell’s lips would thin into an elegant line,and Rose would see in her eyes the distance between theirhouse with its peeling paint, beneath a locust tree thatscattered its seedpods over the lawn each spring, and thehouse where her mother had grown up, in Boston. She

would see the distance between herself and the girl whohad grown up in that house, in lace dresses, playing thepiano or embroidering on silk, a girl who had never beenrude or disobedient. Who had never, so far as Rose knew,wanted to climb the Himalayas, or to fly.

Justina’s secret was that her grandmother, therespectable Mrs. Balfour who, when she appeared in theBalfour pew at the Episcopal Church, resembled anageing Queen Victoria, was going mad. Two nights ago,she had emptied the contents of her chamberpot over themahogany suite in the parlor, spreading them over theantimacassars, over the Aubusson carpet. Justina hadwashed everything herself, so Zelia would not find out.And Zelia had apparently not found out, although thesmell —She still had a bruise where her grandmother hadgripped her arm and whispered, “Do you see the Devil,with his hooves like a goat’s and his tongue like alizard’s? I can.” “Away, away” the words sang throughher head, and she imagined herself as Serenity Sage, atthe mercy of the Cardinal, but with a curved dagger shehad stolen from the Caliph hidden in her garter. Then shewould be away, away indeed, sailing across theMediterranean, with the wind blowing her hair like agolden flag.

Emma’s secret was that her mother had locked the

pantry. Adeline Beaufort had been a Balfour—Emma wasJustina’s second or third cousin—and no daughter of herswas going to be fat. For two weeks now she had beenbribing Callie, with rings, hair ribbons, even the garnetnecklace that her father had given her as a birthdaypresent. That morning, she had traded a pair of earringsfor gingerbread. Callie was terrified of Mrs. Beaufort.“Lordy, Emma, don’t tempt me again! She’ll have mewhipped, like in the old slave days,” she had whispered.But she could not resist fine things, even if she had tokeep them under a floorboard, as Emma could not resisther hunger. They were trapped, like a couple of magpies,fearful and desiring.

Melody’s secret was that she wanted to go to college.There was a negro college in Atlanta that admittedwomen, the preacher had told her. So they could beteachers, for the betterment of the negro race. Becausewhite teachers went to college, and why should onlynegro children be taught by high school graduates—ifthat? And Melody wanted to better the negro race.Sometimes she wondered if she should be with us at all,instead of with the other girls in her school—perhaps, asher aunt often said, she should stick with her own. Buther own filled her with a sense of both loyalty anddespair. Why couldn’t those girls look beyond Ashton,

beyond the boys they would one day marry, and thefamilies they would work for? And there was a streak ofpragmatism in this, as in many of her actions, because therest of us checked books out of the library for her, morebooks than even we read. She had never been told thatcolored folk could not enter the library, but colored folknever did, and what if she was told to leave? Then shewould know she was not welcome, which was worse thansuspecting she would not be. So every morning, after herchores were done and before school, when other girlswere still ironing their dresses and curling their hair, shewent to the houses of the wealthy negro families, of theJeffersons, who traded tobacco and were, if the truth betold, the wealthiest family in Ashton, and the Beauforts,whose daughters were, as everyone knew, Emma’s fourthor fifth cousins, and cleaned. She put the money sheearned, wrapped in an old set of her aunt’s drawers, in ahole at the back of her closet. For college.

* * * *

The ghost was, of course, a girl, and we all knew her,except Justina. She lived near the railroad tracks, by theabandoned tobacco factory that not even the Jeffersonsused anymore, with her father. He was a drunkard. We

did not know her name, but we could identify her withoutit. She was the ghost, the white girl, the albino: whitehair, white face, and thin white hands sticking out fromthe sleeves of a dress that was too short, that she musthave outgrown several years ago. Only her eyes, beneathher white eyebrows, had color, and those were a startlingblue. Her feet were bare, and dirty.

We knew that we weren’t supposed to play with her,because she was poor, and probably an idiot. What elsecould that lack of coloring mean, but idiocy? There wasan asylum in Charlotte—her father should be persuadedto put her there, for her own good. But he was a drunkard,and could even Reverend Hewes persuade a drunkard? Herarely let her out. Look at the girl—did he remember tofeed her? She looked like she lived on air. AdelineBeaufort and Elizabeth Caldwell agreed: it would be forher own good. Really a mercy, for such a creature.

“Come inside, girls,” said Miss Gray. “But mind youwipe your feet. I won’t have dirt in the front hall.”

It was certainly respectable. The parlor looked like theBeauforts’, but even more filled with what Emma latertold us were bibelots or objets d’art: china shepherdessesguarding their china sheep; cranberry-colored vases filledwith pink roses and sprays of honeysuckle; and paintedboxes, on one of which Justina, who had studied French

history that year, recognized Marie Antoinette. And therewere cats. We did not notice them, initially—they had away of being inconspicuous, which Miss Gray later toldus was their own magic, a cat magic. But we wouldblink, and there would be a cat, on the sofa where wewere about to sit, or on the mantel where we had justlooked. “How they keep from knocking down all those—music boxes and whatnots, I don’t know,” Emma saidafterward. But we didn’t say anything then. We didn’tknow what to say.

“Please sit down, girls.” We did so cautiously, tryingto keep our knees away from the rickety tables, with theirlace doilies and china dogs. Trying to remember that wewere in a witch’s house. “I’ve made some lemonade, andEmma will be pleased to hear that I’ve baked walnutbars, and those cream horns she likes.” There was also anangel cake, like a white sponge, and a Devil’s Food cakecovered with chocolate frosting, and a jelly roll withstrawberry jelly, and meringues. We ate although Melodywhispered that one should never, ever eat in a witch’shouse. The ghost ate too, cutting her slice of angel cakeinto small pieces with the side of her fork and eating themslowly, one by one.

“Another slice, Melody, Justina, Rose?” We did notwonder how she knew our names. She was a witch. It

would have been stranger, wouldn’t it, if she hadn’tknown? We shook our heads, except for Emma, who atethe last of the jelly roll.

“Then it’s time to discuss your lessons. Please followme into the laboratory.”

It must have been a kitchen, once, but now the kitchentable was covered with a collection of objects in neat rowsand piles: scissors; a mouse in a cage; balls of string, thesort used in gardens to tie up tomatoes; a kitchen scale;feathers, blue and green and yellow; spectacles, most ofthen cracked; a crystal ball; seashells; the bones of asmall alligator, held together with wire; candles ofvarious lengths; butterfly wings; a plait of hair that Rosethought must have come from a horse—she liked horses,because on their backs she felt as though she were flying;some fountain pens; a nest with three speckled eggs; andsilver spoons. At least, that’s what we rememberedafterward, when we tried to make a list. We sat aroundthe table on what must have once been kitchen chairs,with uncomfortable wooden backs, while Miss Graystood and lectured to us, exactly like Miss Harris inRhetoric and Elocution.

“Once,” said Miss Gray, “witchcraft was seen as a—well, a craft, to be taught by apprenticeship and practicedby intuition. Nowadays, we know that witchcraft is a

science. Specific actions will yield specific results. Rose,please don’t slouch in your chair. Being a witch shouldnot prevent you from behaving like a lady. Justina, yourelbow has disarranged Mortimer, a South Americanalligator, or the remains thereof. A witch is alwaysrespectful, even to inanimate objects. Please pay attention.As I was saying, nowadays witchcraft is regarded as ascience, as reliable, for an experienced practitioner, aspredicting the weather. It is this science—not the hocus-pocus of those terrible women in Macbeth, who are moreto be pitied than feared in their delusion—that I proposeto teach you. We shall begin tomorrow. Please be prompt—I dislike tardiness.”

As we walked down the garden path, away from theRandolph house, Emma said to the ghost, “How did youknow about the lessons?”

“My Papa was sleeping under the Observer,” shesaid. Her voice was a rusty whisper, as though she hadalmost forgotten how to use it.

“Here, I don’t want this,” said Emma, handing her thelast cream horn, somewhat crumbled, which she had beenkeeping in her pocket.

None of us realized until afterward that Miss Grayhad never told us what time to come.

* * * *

“The first lesson,” said Miss Gray, “is to seeyourselves.”

We were looking into mirrors, old mirrors speckled atthe edges, in tarnished gold frames—Justina’s had acrack across her forehead, and Emma stared into ashaving-glass. Justina thought, “I look like her. Mymother looked like her. They say my mother died ofinfluenza, but perhaps she died at the asylum inCharlotte, chained to her bed, clawing at her hair andcrying because of the lizards. Perhaps all the Balfours gomad, from marrying each other. Is that why Father left?”Because to the best of her knowledge, her father was inItaly, perhaps in Rome, where Serenity glared out throughthe bars of her prison, so far beneath the cathedral that nodaylight crept between the stones, at the Inquisitor andhis men, monks all, but with pistols at their sides. Justinalooked into her eyes, large and dark, for signs of madness.

Rose scowled, which did not improve her appearance.What would she have looked like, if she had taken afterthe Winslows rather than her father? She imagined hermother and her aunt Catherine, who had never married.How daunting it must have been, taking for a moment herfather’s perspective, to marry that austere delicacy, which

could only have come from the City of Winter. In Boston,her mother had told her, it snowed all winter long. Roseimagined it as a city of perpetual silence, where the snowmuffled all sounds except for the tinkling of bells, sleighbells and the bells of churches built from blocks of ice.Within the houses, also built of ice, sat ladies andgentlemen, calm, serene, with noses like icicles,conversing politely—probably about the weather. Andnone of them were as polite or precise as her mother orher aunt Catherine, the daughters of the Snow Queen.When they drove in their sleigh, drawn by a yak, theywore capes of egret feathers. If she were more like them,more like a Snow Princess, instead of—sunburnt andungainly—would she, Rose wondered, love me then?

Emma imagined herself getting fatter and fatter, herface stretching until she could no longer see herself in theshaving glass. If she suddenly burst, what would happen?She would ooze over Ashton like molasses, covering thestreets. Her father would call the men who wereharvesting tobacco, call them from the fields to gather herin buckets and then tubs. They would give her to thewomen, who would spread her over buttered bread, andthe children would eat her for breakfast. She shook herhead, trying to clear away the horrifying image.

Melody thought, “Lord, let me never wish for whiter

skin, or a skinnier nose, or eyes like Emma’s, as blue asthe summer sky, no matter what.”

We did not know what the ghost thought, but as shestared into her mirror, she shook her head, and weunderstood. Who can look into a mirror without shakingher head? Except Miss Gray.

“No, no, girls,” said Miss Gray. “All of the sciencesrequire exact observation, particularly witchcraft. Youmust learn to see, not what you expect to see, but what isactually there. Now look again.”

It was Melody who saw first. Of course she had beenpracticing: Melody always practiced. It was hot even forJuly—the flowers in all the gardens of Ashton weredrooping, except for the flowers in Miss Gray’s garden.But in the laboratory it was cool. We were drinkinglemonade. We were heartily sick of looking into mirrors.

“Come, girls,” said Miss Gray. “I would like you tosee what Melody has accomplished.” We looked intoMelody’s mirror: butterflies. Butterflies everywhere, allthe colors of sunrise, Swallowtails and Sulfurs,Harvesters and Leafwings, Fritillaries, Emperors, andBlues, like pieces of silk that were suddenly wings—silkfrom evening gowns that Emma’s mother might haveworn, or Rose’s. “O latest born and loveliest visions far ofall Olympus’ faded hierarchy! Butterflies are symbols of

the soul” said Miss Gray. “And also of poetry. You,Melody, are a poet.”

“That’s stupid,” said Melody.“But nevertheless true,” said Miss Gray.“It’s like—a garden, or a park,” said Emma, when

she too saw. And we could also see it, a lawn beneathmaple trees whose leaves were beginning to turn red andgold. They were spaced at regular intervals along a gravelpath, and both lawn and path were covered with leavesthat had already fallen. The lawn sloped down to a pondwhose surface reflected the branches above. Beside thepath stood a bench, whose seat was also covered withleaves. On either side of the bench were stone urns, withlichen growing over them, and further along the path wecould see a statue of a woman, partially nude. She wasdressed in a stone scarf and bits of moss.

“How boring,” said Emma, although the rest of uswould have liked to go there, at least for the afternoon, itwas so peaceful.

And then, for days, we saw nothing. But finally, in theghost’s mirror, appeared the ghost of a mouse, small andgray, staring at us with black eyes.

“He’s hungry,” said the ghost. Emma handed her apiece of gingerbread, and she nibbled it gratefully,although we knew that wasn’t what she meant. And from

then on, we called her Mouse.“If you’d only apply yourself, Rose, I’m sure you

could do it,” said Miss Gray, as Miss Osborn, themathematics teacher, had said at the end of the schoolyear while giving out marks. Rose scowled again, certainthat she could not. And it was Justina whom we sawnext.

“It’s only a book,” she said. It was a large book,bound in crimson leather with gilding on its spine, and agilt title on the cover: Justina.

“Open it,” said Miss Gray.“How?” But she was already reaching into the mirror,

opening the book at random—to a page that began, “Andso, Justina opened the book.” The rest of the page wasblank. “Who writes in it?” asked Justina, as the words“‘Who writes in it,’ asked Justina” wrote themselvesacross the page.

“That’s enough for now,” said Miss Gray as shereached into the mirror and closed the book. “Let’s notget ahead of ourselves.”

On the day that Rose finally saw herself, the rest of uswere grinding bones into powder and putting the powderinto jars labeled lizard, bat, frog. Mouse was sewingwings on a taxidermed mouse.

“That’s it?” asked Rose, outraged. “I’ve been

practicing all this time for a stupid rosebush? It doesn’teven have roses. It’s all thorns.”

“Wait,” said Miss Gray. “It’s early yet for roses,”although the pink roses—La Reine, she had told us—were blooming over the sides of the Randolph house, andtheir perfume filled the laboratory.

Sitting in the cottage afterward, we agreed: the firstlesson had been disappointing. But we rather likedgrinding bones.

* * * *

Rose’s heart swung in her chest like a pendulumwhen Miss Gray said, “It’s time you learned how to fly.”She told us to meet in the woods, at the edge of Slater’sPond. Mouse was late, she was almost always late. As westood waiting for her, Emma whispered, “Do you thinkwe’re going to use broomsticks? Witches usebroomsticks, right?”

Miss Gray, who had been looking away from us andinto the woods, presumably for Mouse, turned and said,“Although Emma seems to have forgotten, I trust the restof you remember that a lady never whispers. The use of abroomstick, although traditional, arose from historicalrather than magical necessity. All that a witch needs to fly

is a tree branch—the correct tree branch, carefully trained.It must have fallen, preferably in a storm—we arefortunate, this summer, to have had so many storms—andthe tree from which it fell must be compatible with thewitch. The principle is a scientific one: a branch, whichhas evolved to exist high above the earth, waving in thewind, desires to return to that height. Therefore, with theproper encouragement, it has the ability to carry the witchup into the air, which we experience as flying.Historically, witches have disguised their branches asbrooms, to hide them from—those authorities who did notunderstand that witchcraft is a science. It is part of thelamentable history of prejudice against rational thinking. Imyself, when I worked with Galileo —Sophia, I’m afraidyou’re late again.”

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Mouse, and we walked off intothe woods, each separately searching for our branches,with Miss Gray’s voice calling instructions andencouragement through the trees.

Justina’s branch was a loblolly pine, that only shecould ride: it kicked and bucked like an untrained colt.Melody rode a tulip poplar that looked too large for her. Itmoved like a cart horse, but she said that it was so steady,she always felt safe. Rose found an osage-orange thatlooked particularly attractive, with its glossy leaves and

three dried oranges, now brown, still attached, but theydid not agree—she liked to soar over the treetops, and itpreferred to navigate through the trees, within areasonable distance of the ground. When she flew toohigh, it would prick her with its thorns. So she gave it toEmma, who rode it until the end of summer and afterwardasked Henry to carve a walking stick out of it, so shewould not forget her flying lessons. Rose finally settled ona winged elm, which she said helped her loop-de-loop, amaneuver only she would try. Mouse took longer than allof us to find her branch: she was scared of flying, wecould see that. Finally, Miss Gray gave her a shadbush,which never flew too high and seemed as skittish as shewas. Miss Gray herself flew on a sassafras, which nevermisbehaved. She rode side-saddle, with her back straightand her skirt sweeping out behind her, in a steady canter.

“Straighten your back,” she would say, as we flew,carefully at first and then with increasing confidence, overthe pasture beneath Slocumb’s Bluff, the highest point inAshton. “Rose, you look like a hunchback. Melody, youmust ride your branch with spirit. Think of yourself asHippolyta riding her favorite horse to war.”

“Who’s Hippolyta?” asked Emma, gripping herbranch as tightly as she could. She had just avoided anencounter with the rocky side of the bluff. Mouse was the

most frightened, but Emma was the most cautious of us.“Queen of the Amazons,” said Melody, attempting to

dodge two Monarchs. Since the day she had seen herselfin the mirror, butterflies had come to her, wherever shewas. They sat on her shoulders, and early one morning,when she was cleaning the mirror in Elspeth Jefferson’sbedroom, she saw that they had settled on her hair, like acrown.

That day, none of us were being Amazon Queens.Rose was flying close to the side of the bluff and over theHimalayas, in a cloak of egret feathers. She could see theyak she had once ridden, sulking beneath her. She was,for the first time she could remember, perfectly happy.Somewhere among those peaks were the ForbiddenCities. She could see the first of them, the City of Winter,where the Snow Queen ruled in isolated splendor and thePrincesses Elizabeth and Caroline rode thought the citystreets in a sleigh drawn by leopards as white as snow.She flew upward, over the towers of the city, which wereshining in the sunlight. And there were the people, sereneand splendid, looking up at her, startled to see her flyingabove them with her cloak of egret feathers streaming outbehind her, although they were too polite to shout. Butthen one and another raised their hands to wave to her,and the bells on their wrists jingled, like sleigh bells.

She raised her hand to wave back, and plunged downthe side of the bluff.

“What were you thinking!” said Emma, when Rosewas sitting on a boulder at the bottom of the bluff, withher ankle bound up in Miss Gray’s scarf.

“I pulled out of it, didn’t I?” said Rose.“But you almost didn’t,” said Melody. “You really

should be more careful.”Rose snorted, and we knew what Miss Gray would

say to that. A lady never snorts. But Miss Gray had otherproblems to take care of.

“Justina!” she called, but Justina wasn’t listening.Serenity Sage was floating over the Alps in a balloon. Ina castle in Switzerland, The Mask was waiting for her. Hehad not been captured by the Inquisition after all, andknowing that he was free had given her the resolve tostarve herself until she was slender enough to slip throughthe prison bars, and then up through the darkness of thestone passages under the cathedral. There, through arosewood fretwork, she had seen the secret rites of theInquisition, and they had marked her soul forever. Buttoday she was free and flying in the sunlight over themountains. For three days now, her grandmother hadbeen sick. Zelia had been sitting with her, Zelia had takencare of everything, and the cut on Justina’s shoulder was

healing, although the paperweight with a view of theBrighton Pavilion would never be the same. Three days,three days of freedom, thought Serenity, watching themountains below, which looked like a bouquet of whiteroses.

“Justina!” called Miss Emily. “Are you simply goingto float up into the sky? Stop at once.”

The loblolly stopped, although Justina almost didn’t.She lurched forward and looked around, startled, at MissGray.

“I don’t want to be an Amazon Queen,” said Emma,watching from below, “and I don’t want to learn to fly.”

“How can you not want to fly?” asked Rose.“Because I’m not you. How can you never remember

to comb your hair?”Rose ran her fingers through her hair, which did look

like it had been in a whirlwind.“Stop arguing,” said Melody. “I’m worried about

Mouse.”“She’s doing all right,” said Rose. What Mouse

lacked in courage, she made up for in determination: shewas sputtering over the meadow, her thin legs stuck outon either sides of the branch, her body bent forward tomake it go faster, her hair falling into her face.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” said Melody.

“Have you noticed how thin she’s getting?”“You’d be so much better if you practiced,” said

Rose. “Melody practices. That’s why she’s the best flyer,after me and Justina.”

“I don’t think you’re so much better than Justina,”said Emma.

“You’re not listening,” said Melody. “I said—” butjust then a flock of Painted Ladies rose about her, so thickthat she had to brush them away with her hands.

We all learned to fly, although it took longer than weexpected, and by the time we could all soar over the bluff—except Emma, who preferred to stay close to the ground—the summer storms had passed. We could feel, in thecolder updrafts, the coming of autumn.

Despite what Emma had said, Rose was the best ofus, the most accomplished flyer. She had explored theHimalayas, had found each of the Forbidden Citieshidden among their peaks, including the city that wassimply a stone maze, the City of Birds, where she hadpracticed speaking bird language, and the temporary andevanescent City of Clouds.

* * * *

Autumn was coming, and these were the things we

knew: how to, in a mirror or still pond, see HistoricalScenes (although we were heartily sick of the Battle ofWaterloo and the Death of Cleopatra, which Miss Grayseemed to particularly enjoy); summon various animals,including possums, squirrels, sparrows, and stray dogs;turn small pebbles into gold and turn gold into smallpebbles (to which we had lost another pair of Emma’searrings); and speak with birds. We could now speak tothe crows that lived in the trees beside the Beaufort’scottage, although they never said anything interesting. Itwas always about whose daughter was marrying whom,and how that changed the rules of precedence, whichwere particularly arcane among crows.

We thought of them first, when we decided to dosomething about Mouse.

“Can’t we ask the birds? Maybe they know where sheis.” Melody sat curled in a corner of the green sofa, likeone of Miss Gray’s cats. “We haven’t seen her for days.”But the crows, who told us everything they knew aboutmice, knew nothing about Mouse.

“Try the mirror,” said Justina. “If we can watch theBattle of Waterloo over and over, surely we can see whereMouse has gone.” We were startled: since we had learnedhow to fly, Justina had seemed more distant than ever,and although she still spent mornings with us at the

cottage, she always seemed to be somewhere else.The only mirror in the cottage had once been in the

Beauforts’ front hall; it was tall and in a gilt frame, thesort of hall mirror that had been fashionable when oldMrs. Balfour and Mrs. Beaufort, Emma’s grandmother,had ruled the social world of Ashton, whose front hallshad to be widened to accommodate their crinolines. WhenAdeline Beaufort entered the house after GrandmaBeaufort’s funeral, she said, “That mirror has to go.”

Justina wiped the dust from it with her handkerchief,which turned as gray and furry as a mouse.

“Please,” she said, as politely as Miss Gray hadtaught us, because one should always be polite, even todead alligators, “show us Mouse.”

“Not Cleopatra again!” said Emma. We were sittingaround Justina, who sat on the floor in front of the mirror.“You know, I don’t think she’s beautiful at all. I don’tknow what Mark Anthony saw in her.”

“Please show us America,” said Justina. “Andnowadays, not in historical times.” We were no longerlooking at the obelisks of Egypt, but at a group of teepees,with Indians sitting around doing what Indians did, wesupposed, when they weren’t scalping settlers. We had alllearned in school that Indians collected scalps like Rose’smother collected Minton figurines.

“Thank you,” said Justina. “But here in Ashton.” Wesaw a city, with buildings three or four stories high andcrowds in the streets, milling around the trolleys and theirteams of horses. “That’s New York,” said Melody, andwe remembered that she had lived there, once—when hermother was still alive. Then ships in a harbor, their sailsraised against the sky, and then Emma’s mother, staringinto a mirror, so that we started back, almost expecting tosee ourselves reflected behind her. She spread Dr.Bronner’s Youth Cream over her cheeks and what theycall the décolletage, and then slapped herself to raise thecirculation. She leaned toward the mirror and touched theskin under her eyes, anxiously.

Emma turned red. “Parents are so stupid.”“Yes, thank you,” said Justina patiently, “but we

really want to see Mouse. No, that’s—what’s Miss Graydoing with Zelia?” They were walking in the Balfour’sgarden, their heads bent together, talking as though theywere planning—what?

And there, finally, was Mouse.We saw at once why Mouse had been missing our

lessons with Miss Gray: she was tied up. There was arope tied around one of her ankles, with a knot as large asthe ankle itself.

“It looks like—the dungeons of the Inquisition,” said

Justine.“It looks like the old slave house at the Caldwell

plantation,” said Melody. It had burned during the war,and other than the slave house, only the front steps of theplantation, which were made of stone, remained to markwhere it had been.

“It’s a good thing we can’t smell through the mirror,”said Emma. “I bet it stinks.”

* * * *

In the mirror, Mouse was waving her hands as thoughconducting a church choir. And as she waved, visionsrose in the air around her. Trees grew, taller and palerthan we had ever seen. Melody later told us they werepaper birches—she had found a picture in a library book.Mouse was sitting on what seemed to be moss, but therewas a low mist covering her knees like a blanket, and wecould only see the ground as the mist shifted and swirled.The birches around her glowed in the light of—was it thesun, as pale as the moon, that shone through the grayclouds? The forest seemed to go on in every direction, andit was wet—leaves dripped, and Mouse’s eyelashes werebeaded with waterdrops. Then a pale woman stepped outfrom one of the birches—from behind it or within it, we

could not tell, and all the pale women stepped out, andthey moved in something that was not a dance, but apattern, and the hems of their dresses, which were madeof the thinnest, most translucent bark, made the mist swirlup in strange patterns. Up it went, like smoke, andsuddenly the vision was gone. Mouse sat, curled in acorner, with the rope around her ankle.

“I don’t think she learned that from Miss Gray,” saidEmma.

“What are we going to do?” asked Rose. “We have todo something.” And we knew that we had to dosomething, because we felt in the pit of our stomachswhat Rose was feeling: a sick despair.

“Rescue her,” said Melody. She looked around at therest of us, and suddenly we realized that we were going todo exactly that, because Melody was the practical one,and if she had suggested it, then it could be done.

“How?” asked Rose. “We don’t even know where sheis.”

“On our branches,” said Justina. “Mirror, show us—slowly, show us the roof. Now the street. Look, it’s one ofthe drying sheds by the old tobacco factory. All we needto do is follow the railroad tracks.”

“How can we fly on our branches?” asked Emma.“We’ll be seen.”

“No, we won’t,” said Justina. She looked at us,waiting for us to understand, and one by one, as thoughcandles were being lit in a dark room, we knew. “Rose,how long has it been since your mother asked where youspend your afternoons? How long has it been sinceanyone asked any of us, even Melody? Why has Coraliestarted doing her afternoon chores? And when Emmaburned one of her braids, when we were makingbutterscotch on the Bunsen burner and Miss Gray came insuddenly and startled us, did anyone notice?” No one had.“I don’t think anyone has seen what we’ve been doing, allsummer. We’ve become like Miss Gray’s cats, invisibleuntil you’re about to sit on them. I think we could flythrough Brickleford on market day and no one wouldnotice.”

So we flew through the streets of Ashton, as high asthe roofs of the houses, seeing them from the air for thefirst time. Ashton seemed smaller, from up there, andeach of us thought the same thing—I will leave here oneday. Only Emma was sorry to think so.

We landed by the shed that the mirror had shown us.One by one, we dismounted from our branches. Justina—we had not known she could be such a good leader—opened the door. It did look like a dungeon of theInquisition, and smelled just as Emma had expected—the

smell of death and rotting meat. Mouse was sitting in hercorner, with her arms around her knees and her headdown, crying. She did not look up when we opened thedoor.

“Mouse,” said Rose. “We’ve come to rescue you.” Itsounded, we realized, both brave and silly.

Mouse looked up. We had never seen her face sodirty. Each tear seemed to have left behind a streak ofdirt. “Why?” she asked.

“Because—” said Emma. “Because you’re one of us,now.”

* * * *

We could not untie the knot. It was too large, tootight: the rope must once have been wet and shrunk.

“There’s a knife, next to the bowl,” said Mouse. “Ican’t reach it from here, the rope won’t let me—I triedand tried.”

The smell of rotting meat came from that bowl, and itwas covered with flies. When Justina had finished cuttingthe rope from Mouse’s ankle—the rest of us werestanding as close as we could to the boarded-up window,where the crookedness of the boards let in chinks of lightto join the light from the corner that was missing from the

ceiling—she said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”The door banged open. “What do you brats think

you’re doing here?” It was a man, who brought with hima stench worse than rotting meat—the stench of whiskey.

“The drunkard father,” whispered Emma. We allstood still, too frightened to move, and from Mouse camea mouse-like whimper.

“You little bitch,” he said. “I know you. You’re JudgeBeaufort’s daughter. You know how many times yourfather’s put me in that prison of his? You goddamnedBeauforts, sneering down your noses at anyone who isn’tas high and all goddamn mighty as you are. Wait until hesees what I’m going to do with you—I’ll whip you like anigger, until your backside is as raw as—as raw meat.”

Emma shrieked, a strangled sort of shriek, anddropped her branch.

“You’re not a man but a toad,” said Justina.He stared at her, as though she had suddenly appeared

in front of his eyes. “What—”“No, not a man at all,” said Rose. “You’re a toad, a

nasty toad with skin like leather, and you eat flies.”“You don’t live here,” said Melody. “You live in the

swamp by the negro houses, where the water is dark andstill.”

Somewhere, in some other country, where we were

still Justina, Rose, Melody, and Emma, instead ofwitches, we thought, but we haven’t learnedtransformations yet.

“That’s right,” said Emma. “Go home, toad. Go backto the swamp where you belong. You don’t belong here.”

“Sophie,” he said, looking at Mouse. “I’m your father,Sophie.” He looked at her as though, for once, asking forsomething, asking with fear in his eyes.

“You know you are, Papa,” she said. “You knowyou’re a toad. I’ve tried to love you, but you haven’tchanged. You’ll always be a toad in your heart.”

“Go home, toad,” said Justina. “We don’t want youhere anymore.”

“Yes, go back to your swamp,” said Melody. “And Ihope Jim Pickett catches you one day, and Mrs. Pickettputs you into her supper pot. The Picketts like toad. Theysay it tastes like chicken.”

* * * *

Mouse’s father, the drunkard, hopped out through thedoor and away, we assumed in the direction of theswamp. We let out a sigh, together, as though we hadbeen holding our breaths all that time.

We made Mouse a bed in the cottage, on the green

sofa. Emma said, “Callie won’t let me have any morefood. Since the revival came, she says she’s foundreligion, and she’s got jewels waiting for her in heaventhat are more beautiful than earthly trinkets. She’s givenme back my rings and necklaces.” So Rose stole somebread and jam from the cupboard when Hannah wasn’tlooking, and Mouse ate bread with jam until she was full.Melody gave her a dress, because the rest of us were toobig, although Melody didn’t have many dresses of herown. Emma brought soap and water so Mouse couldwash her face, and combed her hair. Properly combed, itwas as fine and flyaway as milkweed. Before we wenthome to our suppers, Melody read to her from ThePoetical Works of Keats, which Emma had taken out ofthe library for her, while the rest of us curled up on thesofa in tired silence.

“Good night,” said Mouse, when we were leaving.“Good night, good night.” And because she was one of usnow, we knew that she was happy.

The next day, Rose and Melody were punished fortaking bread and jam without permission and for losing aperfectly good dress, which Hannah had just darned.

* * * *

“The next lesson,” said Miss Gray, “is gaining yourheart’s desire. For which you will need a potion thatincludes hearts. Today, I want you to go out and findhearts.”

“You don’t want us to kill squirrels, or something?”said Emma, incredulously.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Miss Gray. “Have youlearned nothing at all this summer? The heart is thecenter, the essence, of a thing. It is what gives a stonegravity, a bird flight. Killing squirrels, indeed!” Shelooked at us with as much disgust as on the first day,when we had failed to see ourselves in the mirror. It wasnot fair—Emma had asked the question, and the scornwas addressed to us all. But when had Miss Gray everbeen fair?

So out we went, looking for hearts.

* * * *

This was what we put into our potions. Into Melody’spotion, she put all the plays of Shakespeare, with eachmention of the word “heart” underlined in red, and eachmention of the word “art” as well, even the art in “Whatart thou that usurp’st this time of night?”; The PoeticalWorks of Keats with each page cut into hearts; and a

butterfly that she had found dead on her windowsill, aRed Admiral. With its wings outstretched, it looked liketwo hearts, one upside down. And we knew that Justinahad been right: we were invisible that summer.Otherwise, Emma would have had to spend her pocketmoney on library fines. Emma put in the double yolk ofan egg she had stolen from under the hens, which sheinsisted resembled a heart; chocolate bonbons that Calliehad shaped into hearts; Cocoanut Kisses that we told herhad nothing to do with hearts, but she said that she likedthem; and hearts cut out of a Velvet Cake, all stolen froma Ladies’ Tea that her mother was giving for theMissionary Society. Rose put in a heart-shaped locket thather mother had given her; her mother’s rose perfume,which she said was the heart of the rose (the laboratorysmelled of it for days); and water from the icebox that shehad laboriously chipped into the shape of a heart.Mouse’s potion contained a strange collection of nuts andseeds: acorns; beechnuts, butternuts, and black walnuts;the seeds of milkweed and thistle; locust pods; the conesof hemlock and cypress; and red hips from the wild rosesthat grew by Slocumb’s Bluff. “Well,” she said, “MissGray did say that the heart is the center. You can’t getmuch more centery than seeds, can you?” Justina’scollection was the strangest of all: when Miss Gray asked

for her ingredients, she handed Miss Gray a mask shapedlike a heart on which she had sewn, so that it wascompletely covered, the feathers of crows. “The crowsgave them to me,” she told us later, when we asked herwhere the feathers had come from, “once I explained whatthey were for. They seemed to know Miss Gray.”

“Nicely done,” said Miss Gray. “I think Justine’sspell will be the strongest, since she has been the mostfocused among you, although one can’t quite call this apotion, can one? But Emma’s and Melody’s potions willdo quite well, and Mouse, I’ll help you with yours.”

“And mine?” asked Rose. If she had done somethingwrong, she wanted to know.

“Yours is complicated,” said Miss Gray. “We’ll haveto wait and see.”

* * * *

Years later, Emma asked, “Rose, did you ever getyour heart’s desire?” They were walking in the garden ofthe house where Emma lived with her husband, thesenator. Above them, the maples trees were beginning toturn red and gold. Whenever the wind shook the maplebranches, leaves blew down around them.

“That’s funny,” said Rose, reminding herself not to

think of her deadline. This was Emma, whom she hadn’tseen in—how long? Her deadline could wait. “I don’tthink we ever told each other what we wished for. I guesswhat happened afterward drove it out of our heads.”

“I suppose you wanted to fly,” said Emma. “Iremember—you were obsessed with flying, then.”

Rose laughed. “I thought I was so good at keeping itsecret!” She stopped and looked out over the lawn, wherethe shadows of the trees were lengthening. Soon, it wouldbe time to dress for dinner. She worried, again, about hergray merino. Would it do for Rose’s party? “No,” shesaid, “I wished that my mother would love me. Youremember what she was like, even at the end. What astrange thing to admit, after all these years.”

“I wished that I could eat all I wanted and never getfat.” Emma absentmindedly pulled a maple leaf from herhair, which was bobbed in the current fashion.

“Well, you got your wish, at least. There’s no one inWashington as elegant as Mrs. Balfour.” Rose looked atEmma, from her expensively waved hair to herexpensively shod feet, in the new heels. “How do you likebeing a senator’s wife?”

Emma let the leaf fall from her fingers. “Has theinterview started already?” Rose laughed again,uncomfortably. Nothing is as uncomfortable, her editor

had told her, as the truth. Emma continued, and to Roseher voice sounded bitter, almost accusatory, “So did sheever tell you that she loved you?”

How much easier it was, to answer questions insteadof asking them. To pretend, for one afternoon, that shewas here only as Emma’s guest. “No, she never told me.But she did love me, I think, in her own way. It took me along time to understand that. It wasn’t a way I could haveunderstood, as a child.”

“Understanding—that’s not much of a spell.”Emma sat on a bench beside the ornamental pond,

where ornamental fish, red and gold, were dartingbeneath the fallen leaves. After a moment, Rose satbeside her. She looked at the patterns made by lichen onthe ornamental urns, then at the statue of Melpomene,whose name on the pedestal was almost obscured bymoss. She did not know how to respond.

“Have you heard from Melody?” asked Emma.“Not since last spring,” said Rose, grateful that

Emma had broken the silence. “I don’t think she’ll evercome back. It’s easier in Paris. She says, you know, thereare no signs on the bathrooms. But I’ve brought you acopy of her latest. It’s still in my suitcase. I meant tounpack it, but I must be losing my memory. You’ll like it—one of the poems is about being a witch. I think that’s

what she asked for, to be a poet. It’s still hard to imagine:Melody, the studious, the obedient one, in Paris caféswith artists and musicians, and girls who dance in beads!Drinking and—did you know? Smoking!”

Emma picked up a piece of gravel and tossed it intothe pond, where it splashed like a fish. The sound wasalmost startling in the still afternoon. “It broke up thegroup, didn’t it? When she left for college. I miss her.”

Rose stared up at the leaves overhead, red and goldagainst the sky. “I think it was broken before that.”

“We all paid a price, didn’t we?” asked Emma. “Doyou remember the advertisement? Reasonable rates. Shenever charged us, but I think we all paid a price. You—all those years taking care of your mother while she hadcancer, when you could have been, I don’t know, going tocollege, getting married, having a life of your own.Melody—she’ll never come home. If she did, shewouldn’t be a poet, just another colored woman who hasto sit at the back of the theater. And me—”

Emma picked up another piece of gravel, then placedit on the bench beside her. “I can’t gain weight, youknow. No matter what. I’ve tried. Such a silly problem,but—I don’t think James and I will ever have children.”

“Oh, Emma!” said Rose. “I’m so sorry.” What did herarticle matter? Emma had been her best friend, so long

ago.“Well, that’s the way of the world,” said Emma, her

voice still bitter. Then suddenly, surprisingly, because thiswas Emma after all, she wiped her eyes, carefully so asnot to smudge her mascara. “You gain and you lose, withevery choice you make. That’s the way it’s always been.But you—” She turned to Rose and smiled, and suddenlyshe was the old Emma again. “All those years givingsponge baths and making invalid trays, when you barelystepped off the front porch, and now a reporter! Do youremember when we were reporters? Just before we werewitches.”

“I don’t know if the society pages count,” said Rose.“Although I suppose everyone has to start somewhere. Ifonly we had stayed reporters! But come to think of it—Ireally am losing my memory—I have news for you. I’veheard of Justina! A friend of mine, a real reporter, whowas in Argentina covering the revolution—they’re havinganother one this year—wrote me about an Americanwoman who had married one of the revolutionaries, aman they call—why do revolutionaries always have thesesorts of names?—The Mask. They call her La Serenidad,and there’s a song about her that they play on the radio.He wrote it down for me, but I don’t know Spanish.”

“Now isn’t that Justina all over?” said Emma,

laughing. It was the first time, Rose realized, that she hadheard her laugh all afternoon. After a pause, during whichthey sat in companionable silence, Emma continued, “Didyou ever hear—”

“No,” said Rose. “You?“No.” It grew dim under the maple trees, and the air

grew chill. Emma drew her shawl about her shoulders,and Rose put her hands into her jacket pockets. They satthinking together, as we had so long ago, when we werechildren—wondering what had happened to Mouse.

* * * *

Emma heard the news first, at breakfast. Her motherhad just said, “Would you like some butter on your toast?Or maybe some jam? You look so nice and thin in thatdress. Is it the one Aunt Otway brought from Raleigh?”when Callie came into the morning room and said,“Judge Beaufort, come quick! There’s thieves in Ashton.They’ve gone and murdered Mrs. Balfour, and they’llmurder us too, Lord have mercy on our souls!”

“What?” Emma’s father rose from the breakfast table.“Who told you this?”

“Mrs. Balfour’s Zelia. She stayed just to tell me, thenran on back to help. She’s already called Dr. Bartlett,

though she says he won’t be able to do anything for Mrs.Balfour, poor woman. Blood all over her, Zelia told me,like she sprung a leak. May she rest in the lap of theLord.”

“That’s enough. Tell Henry to get Mr. Caldwell andReverend Hewes, and meet me there.” Then he was outthe door.

“You haven’t finished your boiled egg,” said AdelineBeaufort. “Emma? Emma, where are you?”

* * * *

We watched the events at the Balfour house, thelargest house in Ashton, whose white columns leanedprecariously left and right, from the top of a tulip poplar,the three of us—Emma, Rose, and Melody. We hadlooked for Mouse in the cottage, but she was nowhere tobe found.

“I heard it all from Coralie,” said Melody. “Henry’sher sweetheart—at least, one of them. He said the frontdoor was open, and when they went in, they found Mrs.Balfour lying on the parlor floor, with a bullet through herheart. There was blood all over the carpet, and a wholepile of silver, teaspoons and other things, scattered on thefloor beside her. They think she heard the thief, then came

down with the pistol that General Balfour had used in thewar and found him going through the silver. He musthave taken it away from her and shot her with it.”

“Gruesome,” said Emma. “Look, there’s the hearsedriving up from Pickett’s Funeral Parlor.”

“And they found Justina in a corner of the parlor,barely breathing, with marks around her neck. They thinkshe must have come down too, and he must have tried tostrangle her and left her for dead.” Not even ourimaginations could picture the scene. Surely death wasfor people we did not know?

Emma’s father came out, with Dr. Bartlett, ReverendHewes, and Henry. We knew what they were carryingbetween them: Mrs. Balfour, draped in a black sheet,leaving the house where so many of her ancestors haddied with more decorum.

“If he had the pistol, why didn’t he just shootJustina?” asked Rose. “It seems like a lot of trouble,strangling someone. Do you think they’ll let us see her?”

“No,” said Emma. “Only Zelia can see her. That’swhat Papa said—she’s just too sick. But why don’t welook—” and we knew what she was going to say. Whydon’t we look in the mirror?

The cottage was surrounded by men from the tobaccofields, who had been summoned to form a posse. “Stay

away from here, girls,” said Judge Beaufort. “That thief’sbeen sleeping in our cottage—can you believe his nerve?We found a blanket and some food, even some books. Wethink it may be old Sitgreaves, the one with that idiot girl.He hasn’t been seen for a while. But it looks like he slepthere last night. This time, we’ll send him to the prison inCharlotte, and that girl of his should have gone to theasylum long ago. I’ll make sure of it, when I find her. Butuntil we catch him, don’t you go walking out byyourselves, do you hear?”

We looked at each other in consternation, because—where was Mouse?

“Miss Gray,” said Rose. “Let’s go talk to Miss Gray.”The roses had fallen from the La Reine and lay in a

heap of pink petals on the grass. The garden seemedunusually still. Not even bees moved among thehoneysuckle.

“Something’s not right,” said Emma.“Nothing’s right today,” said Rose. “Who wants to

knock?” No one volunteered, so she knocked with thebrass frog, which was as polished as always. But no oneanswered. Instead, the door swung open. It had not beenlocked.

* * * *

The Randolph house was empty. The sofa in theparlor, where we had eaten with a witch for the first time,the table in the laboratory where we had sat, learning ourlessons, all were gone. Even the cats, which had onlybeen partially there, were wholly absent.

“It was all here yesterday,” said Melody. “She wasgoing to show us how to make dreams in an eggshell.”

“I found something,” said Rose. It was a note, incorrect Spencerian script, propped on the mantel. It said:

Dear Emma, Rose, and Melody,

Please stop the milk. Don’t forget to practice, anddon’t worry. Sophia and I will take care of each other.

Sincerely,

Emily Gray

We looked at each other, and finally Melody saidwhat we were all thinking—“How did she know?”Because it was evident: Miss Gray had known whatwould happen.

We went to Mrs. Balfour’s funeral. Even Melody satin one of the back pews of the Episcopal Church, besideHannah. The organist played “Lead, Kindly Light.” We

ignored the sermon and stared at the back of Justina’shead, in the Balfour pew close to the chancel, and then ather face as she walked up the aisle behind the coffin. Shewas paler than we had ever seen her, as though she hadbecome a statue of herself. In the churchyard, shewatched her grandmother’s coffin being lowered into theground, and when Reverend Hewes said “Dust to dust,”she opened her hand and dust fell down, into the grave,on top of the coffin. Then she placed her hand on hermouth and shrieked.

We found her in the privet grove that had beenplanted around the grave of Emmeline Beaufort, BelovedWife and Mother. We didn’t know what to say.

Justina looked at us with the still, pale face of astatue. She had never looked so beautiful, so like aBalfour. “I shot her,” she said. “She tried to strangle me—she said she saw the devil in my eyes. But I hadGrandpa’s gun, I’d been carrying it in the pocket of myrobe for weeks, and I shot her through the heart.” Thenshe half sat and half fell, at the same time, slowly, untilshe was sitting on the grass, leaning against thegravestone.

“But the masked man—” said Rose.“And the silver—” said Emma.“That was Zelia,” she said. She looked at her hands

as though she did not know what to do with them. “Zeliascattered the silver before she went to get Dr. Hewes. Shetold me to lie still, and that there’d been a thief. But therewas no thief—only me!”

We were silent, then Melody said, “She must havebeen going mad for a long time. You could have told us.”

We heard the privet shake. “Don’t you pester her nomore,” said Zelia. “Allons, ma fille. Your duty here isdone.” She helped Justina up and put a shawl around hershoulders, then led her away. But just before they left theprivet grove, Zelia turned back to us and said, “And don’tyou forget to stop the milk!”

* * * *

The next day, as we hid behind an overgrown lilac inthe Caldwells’ garden, Emma told us that Justina wasgone. “To Italy, to find her father, I think. Papa saw heroff on the train. Zelia was going with her.”

Melody said, “I warned you about eating withwitches. First Mouse and then Justina. It’s as thoughthey’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Italy’s not off the face of the earth,” said Emma.“It might as well be,” said Rose. “And it’s all her

fault—Miss Gray’s. I wish she’d never come to Ashton.”

Eventually, when it looked like the thief who hadkilled Mrs. Balfour, whether or not it was old Sitgreaves,would never be found, we were allowed into the cottageagain. The first thing we did was look into the mirror—itwas the only mirror we could look in, all three of us,without arousing suspicion. “Show us Justina,” we said,and we saw her on the deck of a ship, looking out over theAtlantic, with the wind blowing her hair like a goldenflag. But when we said “Show us Mouse and Miss Gray,”all we saw was a road through a forest of birches, with alow mist shifting and swirling beneath the light of a palesun.

We practiced, at first. But Emma’s mother decided itwas time for her to come out into Ashton society, so shespent hours having dresses made and choosing cakes.Emma said that the latter made up, in chocolate, for theboredom of the former. And Melody said that she had toprepare for school, although she spent most of her timescribbling on bits of paper that she would not show us.Rose practiced the longest, and for the rest of thatsummer she could fly out of her bedroom window, whichshe did whenever she was sent to her room forpunishment. But eventually we could no longer talk tobirds, or turn gold into pebbles, or see the Battle ofWaterloo in a mirror. We realized that we would never be

witches. So the next summer, we became detectives.

Theodora Goss’ short story collection, In the Forest of Forgetting, isforthcoming from Prime Books in the Spring of 2006. In 2004, she won aRhysling Award for speculative poetry. Her short stories and poems havebeen published in Alchemy, Realms of Fantasy, Polyphony, StrangeHorizons, Mythic Delirium, Flytrap, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet,and have been reprinted in Year’s Best Fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasyand Horror, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens.Her short story “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm” was nominated for a WorldFantasy Award. Visit her website at www.theodoragoss.com. The authorcomments: “When I was a child, I wanted lessons in witchcraft—didn’t you?But with Miss Gray, getting what you wish for can be dangerous . . .”

Cotton CountryAaron Schutz

Willy

Willy sat quietly at his table, gazing out throughsmall windows. Past the remains of his garden and theragged cut hay of the field behind his home, he saw therain-softened forms of cottonwood and maple lining thecreek. The trees showed colors of autumn. The house wascold, though heat radiated out from the woodstove.Taking a sip of hot black coffee, he watched his wifePearl cooking breakfast. He felt rather than heard thespeaking of his tiny house: the creak of wood joints, thedrumming of rain on the roof.

He glanced at his mother as she came slowly out ofthe bedroom in a light flowered nightgown and then backthrough the windows. Through the corner of his eye, ashis gaze moved away, she seemed suddenly to disappear.

He stood up, knocking the saltcellar off onto the floor,dropping slowly back to his chair only when he saw thatshe was there.

“Morning, Mama,” he said as she sat down in front of

him.“Well, morning to you—” she said and stopped, her

face blank for a moment till she smiled again, “WilliamWashington!”

“You should put something warm on, Mama,” Willysaid. “you’ll catch your death of cold.”

She shook her head absently. “No,” she said,fingering her nightgown. “Hot. Very hot.” She gazed athim curiously.

Willy shook his head, stared down into the shiny filmof his coffee. He looked up as Pearl carried a wooden traywith bowls of grits and a plate of thick crumbly cornbreadto the table. “Morning! Betty,” she said, setting the trayon the table. “And how are you doing this morning?”

“Good!” said Betty.“How you doing, Willy?” Pearl asked softly. He

nodded. She bent to pick the saltcellar from the floor.After a while, Willy looked up from his grits and

found himself gazing into his mother’s eyes.“Where am I?” she asked him calmly.Willy said nothing. She shook her head. “I’m lost,”

she said in a barely audible voice. Then her face, her bodyshifted: she straightened up and smiled, beamed, as sheturned to stare at nothing. “Yes, George,” she said, “Oh,yes—you wait till evening now!” and then she laughed

like a child. Her hands released the spoon and began toclaw in front of her with careful spidery movements.

“Betty, honey . . . ” Pearl said.Willy pushed his bowl away and got up, shaking. He

crossed the room and pulled on his heavy coat and set hisfloppy hat on his head. Before he reached the door, Pearlgrasped him in an embrace and kissed him. “You’reokay!” she said, and hugged him tightly.

Over her shoulder, Willy saw his mother flicker, likea candle flame in a strong gust of wind, momentarilygoing out and then reluctantly flaming again. “Hot,” heheard her mumble as she clawed the air, and she wipedsweat from her brow with her forearm.

Willy tore away from Pearl and ran outside, over theslick stairs and down the muddy path.

* * * *

Last night he had dreamed . . . he could notremember. He had awoken to find himself crying, andPearl had held him. “I don’t know what’s the matter,” hehad said.

“Your momma’s dying,” Pearl said, stroking his face,and kissed him on the forehead.

* * * *

The rain spattered Willy’s face as he ran. He had thispowerful urge to tear off his hat and coat and be soaked tothe bone. He wanted to be cold. He ran till he slipped inthe mud and sprawled into the wet grass at the side of theroad.

Pulling himself up, he sat and panted for a moment,shaking. He looked up the slope to his home, and wavedweakly at Pearl. She watched him for a moment and thenturned inside. Willy hugged himself and then stoodslowly up and headed down the road to work.

It was early and the sun hadn’t yet cleared thehorizon. He passed the shacks of his neighbors as hewalked in the dim dawn, hunched over, deep in thought.His mother did not leave his mind.

Unlike most in those years, her many children hadescaped, blown like dandelion seeds on the winds ofdesperate fortune across the states: to New York, to Ohio;Isabel a seamstress in Michigan and Harry driving teamsas far away as Kansas. Only Willy was left. He had nowish to leave, but he missed the quiet rumble of voices.His mother missed them also, he knew. He would hearher crying out their names in the night, as if she expectedto call them back the thousands of miles.

She had nothing left, had ever had nothing. Somehowher rare moments of lucidity were most terrible, as if shereached out from the abyss she was falling into, and hewas helpless.

* * * *

“You cannot know what it is to be a slave,” Betty hadtold Willy once, and would say no more. George wouldtell of that time, but not her.

Willy saw, not the road before him, but their oldplantation in his mind as he had seen it many yearsbefore, in winter. He had gone to the back of the nowdilapidated great house to ask permission to look.

“You shouldn’t have come here, boy,” a servant hadsaid vehemently, but Willy hadn’t answered. He hadwalked the wide barren cotton fields as if within somesuffocating dream, turning occasionally to measure thehouse from different angles, the old slave quarters, as ifhe expected any moment for his people to rush out frombehind the doors that now held hay and wagons andhorses. In the other direction, he could see the gray boxyshapes of sharecroppers’ homes.

The cold fields lay open to the sky around him,waiting for the summer, dreaming of the heat and the sun,

oblivious of his presence.A farmhand stood like a toy at the edge of the fields,

leaning on his rifle. Watching.For many months after, Willy had found it difficult to

sleep, tossing and turning, and he did not know what waswrong.

* * * *

“I seen many times,” Betty had said one night as sheslipped away, day by day, into the darkness, when shewas not wholly Betty anymore. “I seen good times andbad times in my life. I been slave and I been free, andlooking back I can’t clearly see which was better. Manybad things happened in those slave days, wicked things.But I met George, then, and was in love.

“I remember an old man, don’t remember his name;he said if he was free, he wasn’t going to get up anymore.He was just going to rest for all the years he hadn’t—themaster, why he’d whip you to death. I saw it. And whenfreedom came, well, he didn’t move from his bed till hejust wasted away, quiet like.

“But when freedom came, well, I had you children.Not you yet, Willy, but Ida and George, and Rachel on theway. We had nothing for such a long time. George and I

would find work in the fields, sometimes, but we neverate too good. There was near as much worry after, I think,than before, but there’s always been a lot of worry in mylife.”

She was quiet for a while, just breathing in herrasping way. Willy had asked her to go to bed when shespoke again. “I’ve always tried to forget. But now, aseverything slips away, those early years seem to draw mepowerfully back.

“God, by my name, I remember the fields and thecotton,” she said. “The sun was a fist in the sky, beatingdown, and my hands hurt like knives were driven intothem, grasping out at those soft bolls. And the sacks wereso big. I thought every time, never, I’ll never fill it, neverbe done. And you couldn’t slow down cause the foremanwould whip you like a mule. But George worked near mein the fields, and when we passed close, he could tell mehow much he loved me. And I knew, I knew that all I hadto do was finish that day, outwait the sun to the horizon.Because that night would be perfect. I would lie withGeorge and there would only be us two and nothing else:no slaves, no worry, no bad time. Perfect.

“It never was. The pain never went all away. It neverfelt good enough. It was only before, in the fields when Idreamed while I worked, and I knew.”

* * * *

Without noticing, Willy had automatically turnedfrom the road onto a path that cut through fields of rain-tamped grass. After a time, the road curved away a halfmile or more to his right, and as he looked up from hisfeet, he gazed into the brush tangled darkness of DouglasSwamp. He stopped for a moment and stared, stillshaking imperceptibly. The swamp’s bitter stagnant smelltinged the damp air.

His father, George, and his mother warned himagainst this place as a child. Houses stayed away from thestagnant water. But the mysterious place had fascinatedWilly and his brothers and sisters. They had come herefurtively many times, long ago, to pole an ancient leakingskiff as far in as the tangle would allow. He rememberedthe strange world there: buzzing insects and birds, darktree fingers curling mossily overhead, hiding the sky.

George had told Willy once, on a summer eveninglong ago, of how the swamp interior had been harvestedof the hardwood that grew there. Willy could almost hearthe crickets of that clear night in his mind, feel the roughskin of his father’s hand holding his, smell the loamyaroma of the land.

“After a while, they’d cut all the live wood,” his

father said. “They sent slaves in on shallow skiffs toprobe the water with long poles tipped with hooks. Deepin that water, old trees floated in the darkness fromperhaps a hundred years before.” How long, Willy hadwondered then, would those trees have stayed outsidetime if no one had wrested them away from theirdreamless sleep?

He remembered, standing there, that someone hadtold him of an old man who still wandered the secretways. He brought the wood from its quiet resting place tocarve it into charms and combs and broaches and otherthings from which he made his living.

Willy wished then, fervently, to travel to the darkheart of the swamp along the twisted byways and sinkdeep into the lightless water. Perhaps he would beretrieved at some far off time by the old man, or somewizened child of his teaching in search of forgottentreasures.

* * * *

He began walking the path to work again.He had tried many solutions for his mother, but had

failed again and again.Poultices he bought had done nothing. He had gone to

their preacher and begged him to pray over his mother.Brother Matthew had come willingly, but shrugging,after, he had touched Willy’s shoulder in sympathy. “Ihave seen this many times,” he said. “There is nothinganyone can do. She is just too old. She has been a goodwoman, and the Lord in His grace will take pity on her.”

And every day she fell farther and farther away.

* * * *

Some months ago, in despair, Willy had hiked intothe wooded hills above Jordan Chapel in search of thewise woman who lived there.

She had found him, not he her, in a grassy shadedgrove. She was very old—it was as if she were made notof skin but of carefully carved ebony.

“What do you want, man?” she had asked.And he had found himself telling his story, his terrible

fear. She listened, and then climbed up on a nearby stumpto chew the meat of a walnut and think.

“I have the sight, man,” she said after a time. “Truly Ido. I live with the spirits in this wood, and in myselfhardly at all.” She shrugged, tossed the walnut behindher. “I can make love potions with a powerful kick,” shesaid. “I can speak with those dead long ago. I know of

your mother, as I know of much, and she is dying. Oldwomen die, man. What would you have me do?”

Willy was silent for a moment, very afraid. “I can’t—” he pleaded.

The woman shook her head. She scratched viciouslyat her head for a moment. “Ah . . . “ she said, that feltgood!”

She turned to Willy again, looking him over,shrugged. “I know the price I’d ask. But I can’t make youunderstand . . . ”

She was silent for a moment, staring into his eyesuntil he felt he fell like a pebble into the darkness of thoseeyes. “Things happen, man,” she said softly. “Whatwould you have me do?”

He said nothing.She coughed dryly, shook her head. “Go home, man,”

she said not unkindly, and disappeared away into theforest like morning mist.

Though he wandered those forested hills for hours,calling out, he did not see her again.

* * * *

Olanta was a small town, huddled around the muddymain road that ran through its center. The road was

flanked by a post office and the train station, and a tavern,and a few other buildings. Mr. Jaimeson’s large andbattered hardware store, tan paint peeling from its walls,stood near the center.

As Willy came into town, few others moved about. Asingle wagon and a couple of horses were visible comingin from the country in the gray haze of rain. The morningtrain whistled as it chugged through without stopping.Willy went around the store and entered through the backdoor after knocking his boots clean on the back step. Hesaw Mr. Jaimeson sitting on his stool at the counter outfront. Mr. Jaimeson had looked up, as always at thesound of the train, but now he looked back to an openbook and began writing with a stubby pencil.

Willy hung his heavy coat and cap on the nail in back.He picked his way forward past the familiar bins of nailsand tool barrels and plows to take the note from the corkboard at the end of Mr. Jaimeson’s counter.

“Morning, Willy,” it said as it always did. Then, “Thefront porch needs sweeping.”

Willy got the broom, pausing long enough to write,“Morning,” on the backside of the note paper.

* * * *

Mr. Jaimeson’s hardware store was a miracle ofdisorganized efficiency. Many years ago, when Willy hadbegun working for Mr. Jaimeson, it had seemed aninexhaustible labyrinth with its many dark nooks andcrannies. Now it seemed as familiar to him as his wife:completely defined in his mind and yet still capable ofsurprises. It held all the wonders of farm machinery in itsmusty interior, and its arrangement was known to nonebut him and Mr. Jaimeson. The store was scattered withmany toy trains, Mr. Jaimeson’s love.

Willy glanced furtively at his boss through the frontwindows. He looked a bit like a stork with his great sharpnose and long delicate fingers, and the years had formed abald spot in the white hair at the top of his head.

He was Willy’s best friend, though they had not reallyspoken for years.

It had been different when Willy had been hired as ayoung man. At first he had been just a runner boy,gathering the orders as they came in, delivering them outto the country. As time had passed, however, they beganto speak more and more in the lull time betweencustomers. They talked of all sorts of things, of goodtimes and bad times, and the weather, and women, andmuch else. They told each other secrets that they had toldno one else and treasured each other’s advice.

As time passed, however, they came to know eachother too well. Customers gave them strange glanceswhen they spoke together; there was idle talk. So theyslowly ceased.

But Mr. Jaimeson had long encouraged and helpedWilly to learn to read, so the orders could be moreprecise. They began to communicate through thenoteboard: mostly business, but with an occasional “Iwish it would rain,” or, “Yes, she is, isn’t she . . . ” Mr.Jaimeson got a bell and rang it when a customer left anorder or something needed doing, and Willy read the notefrom the board.

The black farmers would tap on the back door forWilly, and the white farmers would speak with Mr.Jaimeson. It was as if two stores were created within one—the notes traversing the great chasm between Willy’sand Mr. Jaimeson’s. Their friendship had not decreased,had only been channeled, directed elsewhere. It was timeslike now that Willy wished he could speak with Mr.Jaimeson, but he understood so well that his longing wasnot clearly known to him.

* * * *

The rain fell. Though the sun had risen, the clouds

held the light from the land. Farmers occasionallyclumped in, but it was a slow day. Willy’s mother did notleave his mind, though he tried to lose himself in hiswork.

On an order for staples and a three-inch bolt, Mr.Jaimeson wrote, “Have you taken her to the doctor?”

Willy nearly dropped the paper. Mr. Jaimeson paidhim no attention, speaking to the man who had placed theorder. Willy stared at him, and then remembered himself.He went to weigh the staples.

* * * *

There was a white doctor in Lake City who likedNegroes. He knew many who had visited him. Even hiscousin Josephine had taken her son to see him when hiscoughing would not stop. The doctor had given her pills,and the cough had gone away in a week. But Willy hadbeen certain the white doctor could not help his mother.His bright tools and pills and soft words would donothing against the beast.

Mr. Jaimeson could not understand why Willy was sostubborn. Their argument had gone on for over a monththrough the noteboard.

Willy shook his head as he poured staples into the

great hanging scale. He didn’t know why it bothered himthat morning. He had not changed his mind.

* * * *

But uncertainty gnawed within him. He worked in theback, restocking the nail bins, and stopped again andagain to approach the note board to write the reason hehad just discovered, but found he could not put it downwhen he held the pencil in his hand. He had no reply.

That morning had done something to him. He couldnot for his life remember why he could not take hismother to the doctor.

Later, resting in the shadow at the back of the store,Willy began to fear that his terror had blinded him toBetty’s chance for salvation, that in his selfish need hehad held the doctor away so as to always have hope.

By afternoon, when he was no longer able toconcentrate on his work, he decided he could wait nolonger. “I must go to the doctor. Can I take the team?” hewrote. He left it on the board and went back to work,shaking in his wish for speed.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mr. Jaimesonwalk casually over to the board and read the note. Henodded.

* * * *

Willy drove the jostling flatbed wagon along therutted road, slick reigns tight in his hands. Nellie andJennie, heavily maned draft horses, moved slowly alongbefore him, blowing steam from their nostrils. He urgedthem on, but they had found their own pace, and paid himlittle attention.

Strangely, he felt himself satisfied at their speed. Hehad time. Lake City was ten miles away, but it was stillearly afternoon, and he would reach it in time. The faintwhistle of a special train went up like the wail of somesmall animal behind him.

He thought, not of his mother, but of his friend.Since Willy had known him, Mr. Jaimeson had loved

the trains. When they were still speaking, he had toldWilly that he had never really wanted to run his father’sstore; he had wanted more than anything to be anengineer, to ride the great blazing machines into thenight. But his father had died when he was still young,and he had run the store for his mother and brothers andsisters. Time had passed, and after a while it was too late.

Willy remembered, many years before, when Mr.Jaimeson’s wife had died. After the funeral, while he satat the counter, a train had rumbled through, sounding

blasts from its great whistle. Mr. Jaimeson looked upfrom his books, gazing into nothing as the sound filledthe air. He was quiet for a moment after it passed. Then,slowly, he had said, “Freedom . . . is a locomotive,” andrubbed his eyes with his fists. And though he had notspoken directly to Willy, no one else was in the store.

“I’m sorry,” Willy had written on a note, later, belowa receipt for ten-penny nails.

* * * *

The Doctor

Doctor Bradshaw washed the blood from his hands,standing at the window of his small surgery, gazing outinto the rain. It was a strange day. Usually bad weatherkept the people away, but his waiting room was as full asusual.

Outside he saw a wagon pull up in front of the house.A dripping figure leapt down into the mud and helpedanother, swathed in a tarp, down from the wagon bed.The first half-carried the second out of view. He heard theback door, the colored entrance, open and slam closed. Heshook his head and, after a moment, called for his nextpatient.

His receptionist let a terrified little girl, cradling herleft hand, in with her mother. Doctor Bradshaw gave thelittle girl a broad smile, nodding to her mother, and kneltdown before her. “Well. How are we doing today?”

The girl glanced at him, and then suddenly lookeddown. “I hurt my hand,” she whispered.

“God, I love this job,” he thought, then.

* * * *

But Doctor Bradshaw was a man eternally confused.He had always tried to do what was right, what wasmoral and good for the world, and yet even his simplestacts seemed to warp in his hands.

He had come a long way from the black tie dinners ofhis Boston parents and the aseptic halls of Harvard to hisrun-down Victorian home on the wrong side of the tracksin Lake City. Twenty-seven years old, he felt much older,and at the same time, much younger.

As a child, quiet and bookish, he had dreamed ofbeing a great man, a doer of great deeds, loved by thepeople. He did not forget, and after graduation frommedical school he wandered the eastern seaboard,searching haphazardly for a cause. Almost by accident hefound it with the Negroes and white trash of Lake City.

With money from his parents he bought a house andtools, and set out his shingle.

Everything went as he had planned. At first few came,but after a while word spread and his waiting room beganto fill. He charged little, never more than he thought hispatients could pay.

Yet he found himself unsatisfied. He did not feelcomfortable with the upper-class southern whites he hadmet. And though he lived among the poor, he had electriclights and running water. He could not escape from hisculture and his manners. They spoke respectfully to him,and agreed with his observations. His waiting room wasalways quiet as a tomb, the silence broken only by anoccasional cough, or the cry of a young child. Everymorning he found gifts piled on his porch: flowers andpies and nuts and anything someone felt he might want.But these only served to emphasize their distance fromhim.

He had never been good with women, so from time totime he would pay one of the darker residents of his townto share his bed. He felt bad about it, yet he did not stop.Sometimes, late at night, listening to the breathing besidehim, he wondered if he was good or evil, and he did notknow.

He found himself, in the end, as isolated as before.

* * * *

He saw his last patient late in the day.As they entered, they brought something intangible

with them. A man helped an old woman onto theexamination table at Doctor Bradshaw’s gesture. Theywere the same two he had watched through the windowearlier in the day. There was something wrong aboutthem. It was nothing he could identify, and yet he had feltit, less, when he had seen them earlier. It was more subtlethan fear.

He smiled comfortingly at the man. The old womanlay on the table, mumbling to herself. “Tell me thetrouble,” he said softly.

“It’s my Mama, sir.” the man said slowly, watchingher. “Something’s wrong . . . .” He glanced at DoctorBradshaw, and back to his mother, pointed with his chin.“You see.”

Doctor Bradshaw nodded. “What’s her name?” heasked.

“Betty,” the man said.Though he was certain he knew what was wrong,

Doctor Bradshaw began to check her over carefully,speaking soothingly to her. Her son helped him move herup so he could test her reflexes. He tested her eyes.

For the smallest moment, looking directly into hereyes, he found himself gazing through them somehow.Beyond, he saw a great wasteland, a prairie with rollinghills extending out into the distance as far as he could see.

He finished his examination and turned to her son.The man waited for him to speak. Doctor Bradshawshook his head. “I am sorry,” he said slowly, picking hiswords carefully. “It is her brain. In old people,sometimes, the brain just doesn’t work as well anymore.There’s nothing that can be done.”

The man seemed about to say something, and thenjust shrugged. He helped his mother off the table. “Thankyou very much, doctor,” the man said as he left.

“I’m sorry,” Doctor Bradshaw said again.He watched through his window while the man

hooked his team back up to the wagon and set his mothernext to him on the wagon seat. As they drove off itseemed for a moment, suddenly, that there was only oneof them on the wagon. He blinked, and there were twoagain.

He watched until they passed out of sight.

* * * *

Willy

It was hardly raining at all anymore. Willy’s handsshook as he held the reigns. Betty leaned against himwhile he drove in silence, her hands snaking outperiodically in front of her, grasping at somethinginvisible. Willy didn’t look at her.

She was much worse. Momentarily, again and again,he felt her disappear from beside him.

Pearl hadn’t wanted him to go. She had fought withhim, but he had won. He wished he hadn’t shouted at her.He wished he had listened.

“I am a memory machine,” he thought.

* * * *

“Hey, boy!” a voice shouted behind him, later. “Getthat ugly rig out of the way!” Willy turned and saw twomen waving him to the side as they came up on his left inan expensive buggy. He tried to make room for them, butthe road was too narrow and muddy. He grabbed at hismother as the wagon skidded down into the irrigationditch. “Why don’t you go back home where you belong!”one of the men swore at him as they barreled past.

Willy silently carried his mother up to the grass at theside of the road. The horses neighed, tangled up in theirharnesses, as he sloshed into the ditch. He was too weary

to be angry—the men seemed to him not men at all:aliens from another world.

While he worked in the mud, he saw the Douglasswamp in his mind’s eye. For some reason he thought ofAfrica, and wondered if the jungle was like the swamp’sstrange interior. Had he been drawn to it because heremembered, somehow, his dark homeland? Was thatwhere he belonged like the man had said? Perhaps he wasthere now: a warrior asleep in his hut, dreaming thisnightmare of a foreign land. He stopped a second and letsome mud run through his fingers. He wondered at thesoil in Africa: did cotton grow there too?

He felt a touch on his shoulder. “Oh, George . . . ”came a soft silky voice. He turned and found his motherstanding beside him in the mud. She smiled a beamingsmile at him, ran her hands over his chest. “The sun’sgoing down, love,” she said. She stood back and began toloosen her blouse.

Willy struck her in the face.She lay in the mud and cried. Willy couldn’t believe

he had hit her. He shuddered as he lifted her onto thegrass, and she tried to kiss him. “It’s okay, mama.” Willysaid again and again.

* * * *

He took her home. He wouldn’t speak to Pearl. Hetore away from her and took the team and wagon back totown. He lit lanterns in the store, and filled the orders thatwere still on the board. When there was nothing left thathe could possibly do, he headed slowly home along theroad, avoiding the swamp.

Something was wrong as he came up to his house inthe moonlit darkness.

At first he didn’t know what it was. He saw, dimly, afigure moving down by the creek among the cottonwoods.

“Mama!” he cried suddenly, and he ran towards her.She was very distant from him, ephemeral; he lost heragain and again while she flickered. He ran and ran andran. As he came closer she seemed different to him,younger, her hair darker, though it was difficult to tell inthe darkness. She was flickering very badly now.

He reached her finally, his lungs like knives in hischest, and he grasped her shoulder.

He found himself elsewhere. The heat was like in anoven, pouring down from a bright sky. Around him,cotton fields stretched in rolling hills to the horizon. Theland rippled with bent dark figures. He held a huge fabricsack in his hands. He looked into a young woman’s eyes.She touched him lightly on the arm and smiled. “Gohome, son,” she said. He tried to speak, but the fields

faded as a guttural voice shouted behind him. He felt thefiery touch of a lash, and she pushed him away. As he fellhis face turned to the sky behind her and he saw that itwas empty. He found himself lying in the mud, face downbeside the roaring creek.

Soft hands pulled him up and held him. “Your mamadied,” Pearl said.

“She’s gone to hell,” Willy whispered, shaking sohard he thought he would shatter.

“Oh, no,” said Pearl, holding him tight. “Not yourmama. The angels carried your mama straight to heaven.”

He shook his head. “No sun,” he said, “how can theday end if there’s no sun?”

Pearl took him inside and let him see how peacefulBetty’s body was. He felt her white hair before Pearl puthim to bed.

That night, he dreamed he fell through a hundreddifferent worlds, seeing through a hundred pairs of eyes.

* * * *

Willy went to work early the next day. When heentered the store, he came up to the counter, and withoutthinking, he said, “Morning, Mr. Jaimeson.”

Mr. Jaimeson looked up and in his hunched figure

Willy saw such a vision of terror, of loss, and of sorrowthat Willy turned away as if he had said nothing.

Later he wrote, “My mother died. It would be good ifyou would pray,” on a scrap of paper.

In the afternoon, Willy found the paper back on thenoteboard, and in the space he had left, Mr. Jaimeson hadwritten, “Yes.” And underneath he had drawn a carefulpicture of a locomotive, so real that it seemed it would,any moment, ride off the page. The rails ran together as ifthey went forever into the distance.

* * * *

The Doctor

That morning, Doctor Bradshaw woke in his largesoft featherbed, entwined with a dark woman whosename he could not remember. The sun sifted like fineyellow sand through his curtains and over theknickknacks on his shelf to gently massage his face andshoulders.

For a moment he was lost. He had dreamed of the oldwoman from the afternoon before, and had found himselfwandering the wasteland in her eyes—searching forsomething he could not identify.

In that broad empty land, he came upon an ancientbrown woman. She gazed on him, not with an expressionof surprise or of distaste so much as uneasiness.

“You don’t belong here, man,” she said.“Yes, I know,” he said as if he understood. “I have

lost myself, I’m afraid. Took a wrong turn somewhere inmy dream.”

“You’re different,” she said, tossing her hair. “Whatcan you do, I wonder. Have you strong magic?”

“I’m afraid not.”She was quiet for a moment, looked away from him to

the land. “What do you see, man?” she asked.Doctor Bradshaw peered carefully around him. For

the smallest moment he suddenly thought he saw, as ifthrough a veil, the black fingers of cotton plants coveringthe plain, dark figures rippling at work among them. Hefelt an intense brush of heat, then nothing. He shrugged,turned back to the woman. “Nothing,” he said.

She gave him a strange look, shook her head. “Youcancel yourself out,” she said. “I . . . do not understand.”She shrugged. “What is your world, man?”

He did not answer, and, after a time, he realized thatshe had left him. He continued to wander, searching overthe barren hills.

Awake, now, he lay quiet and sad, holding the empty

land and the ancient woman’s face in his mind. Onimpulse, he turned and put his mouth close to the ear ofhis bedmate.

“I care,” he whispered to her urgently, “I care, I care,I care . . . .”

She stirred, but did not awake.

About the author: “I took a long break from fiction writing, and lived in a fogfor many years until I woke up one day and discovered I was a tenuredprofessor. With my new freedom, I tried my hand at fiction again, and found,to my relief, that the writing block that had driven me from the field seemedto have lifted with the fog. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with my wifeJessica and our two cats, and spend most of my time sitting in coffee shopsreading dense tomes and, occasionally, penning a story.”

Nine Tails, Hundred HeartsYoon Ha Lee

Yeng knew many things about foxes. He knew therusset of their fur and the soft marks their feet left indamp earth. He knew the stink of their urine and the feralamber of their eyes. He knew that the gumiho, the nine-tailed foxes, ate livers or hearts, or sometimes both, whenthey sought to abandon fox-shape for human forevermore.

Yeng knew what his older sister and parents hadlooked like with their hearts and livers removed. He hadrun, carrying those red-gaping holes with him. Even now,in his dreams, he ran. His footsteps in the snow were red-edged.

The shape watching him tonight was red-edged, too.Yeng looked up and exhaled. Two golden eyes, glintingin the light of Yeng’s fire. Two ears, pricked forward.Four black-padded paws and one white-capped tail. Onered, red tongue.

Yeng stopped short of counting the pointed symmetryof teeth. “Fox,” he said. The knife’s hilt in his hand wasmoon-cold, night-cold.

“Hunter,” said the fox. She huffed, and remained a

fox. Her one tail did not fan out into nine. “You seek toincrease your collection of pelts.”

Yeng had spoken with a great many foxes, fromhuddled cubs to vixens wearing human skin beneathhuman silks. None of them had spoken with this fox’slight, sing-song cadences. She spoke the way he imaginedan eccentric philosopher, carrying an ink-blotched brush,might speak. “You’re not gumiho.”

The fox yawned. “Hu jing, if you please, of theYellow Empire. ‘Transcendent fox,’ you would say. Ah—on my mother’s side. I was visiting family.” Her gazesharpened. “You skinned eleven of my sisters.”

Do not kill this one yet, Yeng told himself. He had notrealized that foxes reckoned languages and borders afterthe manner of men. And—“Foxes count?” The knife’sweight steadied him.

“Please,” said the fox. “Counting is the first thinglearned by a fox with any higher aspirations. Men. Youuse clever things for all the wrong purposes.” She flickedthe tip of her tail once, twice.

“Numbers are a thing of men.” He was no courtscholar, but he was certain of that. “What use would a foxhave for numbers?”

“Use?” asked the fox. The light in her eyes shoneelsewhere. “What use would a fox have for fingers, which

will never have claws? For a mouth with flat teeth? Forhair, long and black, that only covers the head?”

Yeng coughed, spat. “So this is why you are notgumiho. It is a choice you have made.”

“Use,” the fox said again, although the tension in thesleek curve of her body showed that she was not ignoringhim or his knife. “Have you ever thought about thesignificance of numbers? Three mated with itself becomesnine. Ten mated with itself becomes a hundred. Thusthese are numbers pleasing to the world.”

“And so a nine-tailed fox becomes desperate toconsume a hundred livers,” said Yeng, not reallyunderstanding.

The fox sounded pleased. “Yes. That is half of it.What they never figure out is that you can find thepleasure in numbers without yearning after anything soabsurd as man-shape.”

“Woman-shape.”“Both are not-fox, hunter. That is the important

point.” The fox uncoiled and stood, poised, with one pawcrushing a withered fern. “Tell me—will you listen to ariddle, before you begin your hunt?”

“One riddle.” He still had his knife. What harmwould a riddle do?

The fox huffed again. “You have a quantity of things,

hunter. Count them by sevens, and there are two left over.Count them by nines, and there is one left over. Countthem by elevens, and there is one left over. How many ofthese things do you have, hunter?”

Yeng puzzled over it, scratching notches into a fallentwig. The numbers tangled together in his head—mating,the fox might have said, but in strange, uncomfortablecouplings. He looked up, scowling.

“Don’t be troubled,” said the fox. “It’s a tangly wayto count.” She licked a paw absently. “It is the sort ofthing I think numbers are for, is all. Besides, you’re oneshort of the number I was thinking of.” The fox stilledsuddenly. “The hunt?”

“You are a very strange fox,” Yeng said, sheathinghis knife. “I have killed many of your clan.” And hersisters, apparently. “My ancestors will not mind if I sparea lady among foxes, a philosopher-fox who has done meno harm.” He could imagine her feasting on the bones ofmice and stealing, with foxy pragmatism, the rice-cakeofferings from a grandfather’s grave, rather than huntingfamilies for their livers. Or hearts.

“Thank you, hunter. Remember me if you answer theriddle.” The fox sounded melancholy. A rain-patter offootfalls, and she was gone, one more red streak in theforest.

Yeng breathed deeply of the woodsmoke, thencoughed. The smoke was more real, more solid, than thephilosopher-fox with her peculiar talk of numbers. Hebanked the fire and huddled among his blankets, his one-night shelter of leaves and branches.

His dreams that night were of fox pelts, staring at himfrom the holes where their eyes had been plucked out. Helost count of the swinging snow-tipped tails. He wokewhen he realized his heart, in the dream, had ceased in itsmeasure of beats. He blinked into the slanting sunlight,heart drumming.

There remained foxes to hunt. One short, thephilosopher-fox had said. It troubled him, and through thelean autumn, foxes slipped away from him. They tauntedhim with their harsh barks, their tree-snagged tufts of fur,their blurred pawprints, so like a dog’s, on either side of acreek. He brought down hares and pheasants to fill hisstewpot, measured out scant handfuls of rice, andcontinued hunting. He knew foxes. One would succumbto him if he was patient.

The hollow place inside him ached when Yeng finallyran a fox to ground. Its limp had betrayed it. An oldwound, he guessed, for the scar was scarcely visiblethrough the thinning fur. Yeng’s older sister had had atwisted foot; he had forgotten that. It stared up at him

from the snare, panting.Yeng wondered if it was one of the philosopher-fox’s

sisters. Surely that strange fox had returned to the YellowEmpire by now. Would she chide him for this latest hunt?“Do you count?” he asked this fox.

The white tip of its tail blurred; the thin, pointed faceof a woman stared up at him, mouth open, teeth small andwhite. The golden eyes were bright, sharp, puzzled.

The lame vixen died under his knife, withoutanswering in anything but snarls and snapping teeth,unable to complete the change. How many livers had shefeasted on? Her blood on his hands was dark, too dark.

The world smelled sharper: the iron edge of blood, thefox’s rank fear, the snow to come. Yeng looked up fromhis newly black-gloved hands, and saw the philosopher-fox watching him. For the first time in years, he knewwhat it was to be hunted, as he had hunted so many.

“Did you remember me?” she said. Her tone waswistful, and utterly without grief for the ruins of what hadonce been a fox, even a flawed fox, a flawed almost-human. The philosopher-fox, who smelled of dry mossand moon-silvered nights and ink.

“I haven’t answered your riddle,” said Yeng. It cameout as a bark.

“But you have,” said the fox, ears twitching in

surprise. “The answer is upon you. Or do you mean to tellme in all your time hunting foxes, you never counted thedeaths? The hunter partakes of the hunted. The hunterbecomes the hunted. And the hundredth death is the gate,through which there is no returning.”

Death is numberless, he wanted to tell her, but shehad gone, leaving him with the fox-shape he had takenon, the evidence that he was wrong.

She had asked, What use would a fox have forfingers, which will never have claws? For a mouth withflat teeth? For hair, long and black, that only covers thehead?

All the use in the world, Yeng thought, to a fox whohad once been human. All the use in the world.

Yoon Ha Lee’s fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy andScience Fiction, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Ideomancer, andShadows of Saturn. She is a section editor at The Internet Review of ScienceFiction. Although she has never gone hunting, she grew up with stories offoxes. The Chinese remainder theorem is one of her favorite pieces ofmathematics.

Children of the RevolutionLavie Tidhar

Moscow was cold and harsh, a suburban prisonwhere uniforms and plain-clothes all watched youhungrily as you walked past.

“Moscow?” Dan snorted. “Moscow is ten millionpeople who hate you.”

I’d met Dan the previous night, drinking peva at oneof the over-priced Yank chain-restaurants off Red Square.He was, he said, a journalism student, working inMoscow for a year correcting grammar for the Englishdaily and supposedly improving his Russian.

“Moscow is a bitch.” He banged his beer glass on thetable and looked at me goggle-eyed.

I’d been in Russia for just over a week, arriving at oneo’clock in the morning at one of the local airfields on theoutskirts of the city. It was snowing outside and theunderground was shut for the night. I had nowhere to go,and subsequently passed the night drinking vodka withtwo sleepy security guards and a Georgian kid. Peoplewere sprawled on benches, dozing, clutching littlebundles, Adidas bags, nylon shopping bags with curling,

unfamiliar typefaces. When I had to go to the toilets I hadto pass two babushkas who guarded the public loo,charging fifteen rubles for the privilege of taking a piss inwhat was, essentially, a hole in the ground.

“Cheap vodka though,” Dan murmuredconfidentially. “And easy women. If you can’t get laid inMoscow you can’t get laid anywhere.”

The beer was good, the company less so.When first light appeared I got the bus from the

airfield to the nearest underground station, and tried tofind my way to the agency who issued my visa invitation.I had three days to get it stamped.

I managed by comparing the Cyrillic squiggles on thepublic map with the English notations on my travel guide,and only got lost three times before arriving at the rightstation. Instructions for locating the agency provedsomewhat problematic, however, being, as it were, to“walk north four hundred meters,” which wasn’t muchhelp without use of a compass, and to look for thebuilding “opposite a clump of trees.” It turns out Moscowhas a fair number of trees, unfortunately.

I did manage to get some directions, however, withthe aid of hand signals and repeatedly pointing at myguide book, (not to mention shouting in English loudlyand slowly in the best tradition of an American tourist)

and was soon walking briskly away on a wide residentialboulevard, backpack strapped on, guidebook in hand,chain-smoking a new pack of Russian-made Marlboros.

Then a strange thing happened.I felt a little light-hearted from the nicotine intake and

stopped to put my backpack down and stretch my back.The nicotine high did not subside, however, but startedspiralling inside my head and escalating into a fullflashback. A Freebie. I could sense my pupils dilatingand physically feel it as the light coming into my eyeswas being magnified.

Everything became bright. And quiet. It was weird—a bit like being a page on a photocopy machine. It felt likethe sun was moving rapidly along the street, scanningeverything it touched, magnifying it and fragmenting intomore light the more it moved. It may have been genuinelyquiet, it may have been that my ears popped, but it waseerie, silent, with a feeling that had “desolate” written allover it in a black marker pen.

I was beginning to freak out, but trying to breathdeeply and just get along with it, because there is fuck allyou can do when you’re tripping like this but trying toride with it, if you know what I mean—when this smallhand slid into mine and held on to me. It was warm, and Ilooked, first to my right and then, on not finding anything

there, looked down.He was only a little boy, no higher than my belt (if I

happened to be the sort of person who wears belts, whichI’m not) and he was looking up at me with what I couldonly describe as pure hope, radiating off his face in wavesof pulsating white light.

He tugged at my arm. His lips moved without sound,saying something to me. Then his hand was gone and sowas he, marching down the street on his little legs,walking into a blazing sunrise, merging seamlessly intoit.

“Wait!” I shouted. I grabbed my backpack and startedrunning after him. It seemed I wouldn’t need to run morethan a few paces before catching up with him, but I waswrong: it was becoming harder for me to see him in allthe light that was now surrounding me, and the street,and the boy, and I kept running awkwardly along untilsuddenly the light disappeared and it was grey again, andcold, with snowflakes falling around me and two grey-blue uniformed guards were staring at me suspiciously,their handguns drawn.

I was standing outside the Institute where the visaagency was supposed to be, and I was cold, and hungry,and normal once again. There was no sign of the littleboy, and so I shrugged mentally and approached the task

of finding someone who could help me, speak English,preferably both. Young teenagers in outdated sportsclothes kept going through the gates in and out of theinstitute, flirting with each other and giving me strangelooks.

* * * *

Days in Moscow like a silent film in grainy black andwhite; a hundred shades of grey spilling on the sidewalksand on people’s faces. Sightseeing in the rain; brightcamera flashes; the glare of rusting guns.

You notice the little things . . .Walking past the Bolshoi theatre when the rain has

stopped and noticing for the first time the pools of watercollecting in the street.

Green and luminous, drying into powder on the sides.“Did you see that?” said Brian. He and Sarah stopped

and stared at the water by our feet. I tried convincingly fora shrug. “Weird.” I thought the water shimmered for abrief second and suddenly resembled a child’s face, greeneyes bright, looking directly at me. If I jumped nobodynoticed, and the next second it was gone and I could seewhere the green bits were that may have been eyes, thecrack in the pavement that could have resembled a nose,

the curling of lips . . .“It’s fucking luminous,” Brian repeated, his loud

American voice attracting unwanted attention from theticket touts waiting on the corner by the Metro station.“What the fuck do they put in the water here?”

I shrugged again. “Must be one of them foreignthings.” I smiled and started walking away. “We bettermake a move unless you really desperately want to buy aticket to the opera tonight.”

Sarah grimaced and pulled Brian after me. Wemarched towards the Kremlin’s gates, leaving a cloud ofdejected black marketers in our wake, and the twinkle ofgreen eyes . . .

“It’s the nuclear waste,” Dan explained to us thatnight. “You know the circle line on the metro?” I nodded.“Well, in the sixties the circle line was the end of the city.There was nothing beyond it, so the government decidedit was a perfect place to bury nuclear waste.” He grinned.“Seven meters down in sealed containers. Perfectsolution. One problem.”

“What’s that?” Sarah asked.Dan shrugged, a movement born of long practice.

“Thirty-five years later the whole area is SuburbanCentral, and it turns out that not only is seven meters notenough, but the containers are now leaking. They have a

special City Unit equipped with Geiger counters whowalk around looking for radiation and then dig it up andbury it somewhere else. Believe me,” he lit a cigarette,“you don’t want to live here any longer than you have to.”He took a long drag on his Marlboro. “Smoking is thevery least of your problems.”

* * * *

Smoking was turning into a major problem for me,however.

Mid afternoon, with patches of sun dancing like wetfire-flies over water-soaked streets, and the black granitecube that is Lubyanka standing impervious like a badheadache.

We’d gone to see the KGB museum and of coursecouldn’t find it. Mentioned in the travel guides,mentioned by the hostel people and by tour organisers, itwas supposedly based in the former KGB headquartersitself—Lubyanka prison.

When we finally got an address for it (through therole-playing gamer who dossed on the late shift at ourhostel) we rode the metro from Ryazanski Prospekt directto Lubyanka and went looking for it.

“Do you think this is it?” we looked dubiously at the

number written over the large double-door. It was thecorner of the building itself, now the home of the RussianFederal Police—successors to the KGB.

“A supermarket?” Brian and I began to laugh.“Well, go on,” Sarah said.“Go on what?”“Go in and ask where it is.”Brian pointed at the gaping door. “In there?”She nodded. So we did.We wandered around this supermarket—a Western

supermarket, stocked with expensive German sausages,Italian wines, Swiss cheeses—and mustered up courageto ask.

I came up to an elderly gentleman in a green suit andsaid, “Excuse me . . . ” and one of those embarrassednoises, like “Umm . . . ” cough, and repeat “Excuseme . . . ” He turned around and stared.

‘Do you speak English?” I asked, trying to pitch myvoice low so as not to attract attention.

“Nyet.” What a surprise.“Um . . . ”Brian came and joined me, smiling like a friendly, I-

don’t-eat-people-I-only-eat-porridge kind of bear at theshop attendant. “KGB?” He asked, his voice boomingacross the shop.

The old man looked bewildered.“Museum.” I added. “Uh, Moo-ze-oom? KGB?”The man shrugged. “Supermarket.” he said. His eyes,

dreaming in Russian of a better future where everyonewill work in the morning, play chess in the afternoon andgo fishing in the evening, were sad. Obviously, it was asupermarket. And he was just an old man wearing ahideous green suit and serving, as always, the people whohad money and power and who always ate well.

As we walked outside it started to rain again, andSarah was waiting under the arcs, watching groups ofyoung policemen and their girls enter the building. “KGBMuseum?” we shouted across at them hopefully.

One of the girls turned around to us, her pretty facesmudged with cheap makeup.

“We go—” her face intense in concentration. “—dancing class.” A brief smile, and she has disappearedinside.

It was different to the way I imagined it will be.Imagine—Lubyanka! A central point for every bad

Cold War thriller, and people were buying Swiss cheeseand going dancing. It seemed likely sooner or later a richAmerican would buy the whole building and transport itat vast expense across the ocean to somewhere likeKansas or Nebraska and people, rich and fat people with

white socks encased in sandals, will come to see it fromall over the continent and pay to go inside.

We heard a loud voice calling from across the street.“Oi!”Waving, the figure lurched towards us, crusty beard

and nose ring and flashing eyes, looking wildly around.He came forward, slapped Brian on the back, kissedSarah gallantly on the cheek and pushed a king-size jointinto my hand. “Ye’ll never look at Moskva the same wayagain!”

I should have thrown it away. I should have pointedout the obvious, that he was a lunatic for even thinking ofbuying dope in Russia, that it was dangerous, and that wewere right outside the most feared and hated place in thewhole of Russia. And it was a bit like smoking it outsidethe MI5 building or FBI HQ.

Which, thinking about it, are probably the safestplaces to do it. So instead of shouting I took a long, longdrag on the joint, and then another, cupping it in my fistand drawing long slivers of smoke into my lungs.

The colours of black like racks of dead shoes lined upas far as the eye can see . . . And I was slowly movingaway from Lubyanka, watching the dark impregnablecube blossom like a mushroom from a nuclear bomb,spitting out faces . . . Brian and Sarah shouting distantly,

shaking my shoulders. But all I can see is eyes, eyes, asthe children congregate around me with hesitant smilesand frozen flesh.

There are children in the rich and dirty furs of whitebears and minks, pale, aristocratic faces looking up at me,their feet bare and steaming red where they touch theground; children in torn blue overalls, mass produced inthe Ukraine like Model-T Fords but without the materials,the skill or the interest. Clothes for the peasants, and fortheir children who walk through dusk and snow blizzardsand ice to seek potatoes like shrunken heads in the wastedfields. Children naked and stiff with bruises, child-prostitutes sold like cattle, children with Mongolian andChinese and Kazak and Afghani features, mixed children,shaken and stirred.

They talk to me soundlessly, and I begin todistinguish names, if not words, in the halting movementsof their lips.

I’m floating higher and higher in an escalatingrainbow-coloured graveyard-shifting spiral reaching forthe skies and for St. Nicholas and St. Illich and St.Joseph. I think my lips are forming words and, throughthe process of breathing in and out air, form shouts,metamorphosing screams. Boris and Ivan and littleLudmilla four years old when the soldiers came, Vladimir

from the frozen north, Xian whose father was a Ruski andwhose mother a purchase from Ulan-Bataar working inthe fuck-factories of Moscow. And a little way away fromthe crowd green wide eyes looking at me from a glowingface growing brighter and brighter until I touch the sunand everything is burnt-out and I fade.

* * * *

“Dude?” A male voice, uncertain. “Dude, can youhear me?”

I opened my eyes onto a darkened room. Through thewindow only the sky, painted hues of cinnamon and acid.A face forming, as my eyes adjust, from a scatter-diagraminto a familiar face. Brian.

I eased myself up, propping against a blessedly coolpillow. “Howzit Bri.”

His face broke into a relieved smile. “Jesus, dude!You scared the shit out of me!”

I raised my hand to my head, groaned. “Whathappened?”

“Man! you smoked that joint like a fucking trooper,when all of a sudden you go stiff, with these massivepupils in your eyes, staring at something, hyper-dilating.Crusty, I mean John, tried to shake you and get you out of

it, but it only seemed to make it worse. You startedshouting, I don’t know, names, words in Russian, brokenChinese. Couldn’t get any sense out of you, and we wereall like freaking out and shit. John sort of put his handover your mouth . . . ” He looked at me apologetically,then continued, ‘and we started moving you as far awayfrom there as we could. Then, about five minutes later youjust passed-out, so we smuggled you onto the Metro andtook you back.”

“You didn’t ask for any help?” I massaged my scalp,feeling the roots ease as I rubbed.

“Are you nuts? We were lucky we didn’t get bustedby anyone, otherwise they’d only delay us and ask formoney.” He banged fist into large palm. “FuckingMoscow.”

I sat in bed and wondered. “I think I’m going mad,Bri,” I said.

He looked at me, sympathy in his eyes. “You need totake it easy, dude,” he said. “Why don’t you come withme and Sara on the train tomorrow? Come to Uzbekistanwith us.”

I smiled, and thanked him, and said I’d think about it.I knew I had to leave Moscow. That night we all went outto a Mafiya pub, and got drunk, and danced, and talkedloudly, watching the suited men and the tailored women

who were the only people to afford going out in Moscow.And in the shadows, and in the corner of my eyes, the

children watched.

* * * *

I escaped to St. Petersburg on a midnight train,seeking solace and peace amidst car-fumed streets, tattooparlours and German restaurants, second-hand bookshopsand fast food joints and ForEx bureaux and open markets,tracing invisible paths through the open sore ofLeningrad, travelling by foot and underground, fromLeninski Prospekt to the Church of the Blood . . .

Day, alternating between sun and snow, and themuddy waters of the canals flowing past the church’scourt-yard.

I was growing used to shadows where no shadowshould be, seeing the fleeing steps of children at thecorner of my eye, weaving in and out of geometry. Iignored the hawkers selling matrioshka dolls andKalashnikov World Tour T-shirts (Mozambique,Rwanda, Bosnia, Serbia . . . Russians have a sick sense ofhumour), bought a ticket from the booth and walked upthe stairs and into the church.

I ignored the mosaica exhibitions and found a

secluded corner, looking through a small window on tothe canal. I needed to think.

After a time, the boy appeared.There was no light display this time, no drugs

affecting my brain. There was a light patter, of bare feetstepping cautiously on cold stone, and he stood in front ofme, smiling, green eyes wide.

“What’s your name?” I said. I felt an urge to ruffle hishair, and did. He kept smiling, silent.

“It’s a mystery, isn’t it?” I asked him. My voiceechoed, hollow between the stone walls. “What do youwant me to do? What am I meant to discover?” He lookedat me and smiled. I smiled back, and shrugged, amovement I have learnt to perfection in my brief stay inMoscow. The boy shrugged, imitating me, and I laughed.Then I felt his hand slipping into mine again.

“Take us with you,” he said then, catching me bysurprise, his high, clear voice ringing. “All of us.”

I felt his touch growing faint. ‘Take us with you . . . ”“I will,” I said. “I promise.” But I was talking to

empty air, and a moment later a group of tourists arrived,giving me looks of disdain.

I smiled at them and left.

* * * *

I kept moving. I went from St. Petersburg toEkaterinsburg, from Ekaterinsburg to Irkutsk, fromIrkutsk across the border to Mongolia and Ulan-Bataar.And I took them with me, every face and every name.Every child.

I grew used to their silent presence, crowding thetrain’s narrow corridors, sticking their heads out of thewindows, dangling their legs in the air on the top bunks. Ithink they enjoyed it. The other passengers shunned me,avoiding the entire car, and it would have been empty ifnot for the kids. It was summer in Siberia, and the coldand the snow storms of Moscow and St. Petersburgdisappeared like a bad dream, leaving a fresh, warmsmell in the air, and longer days, and sunshine. Theconstant motion of the train was soothing, and it lulled usinto a strange sense of calm.

And when the train finally crossed the border, aftersix hours of waiting on the Russian side as a mountain ofsmuggled goods was slowly taken off the train andassembled on the platform, it felt as if a barrier wasremoved, as if a load, previously unnoticed, had suddenlybeen lifted.

I felt them go away, by ones and twos, until only apair of green eyes remained, smiling at me, and then they,too, faded away.

I wish there was a point to the whole story, a happy ormeaningful ending with a sound moral truth, but thingsdon’t happen this way. Life, and history, are nothing butthe seemingly endless procession of silent ghosts.

Most of them are children.

Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, lived in Israel and South Africa,travelled widely in Africa and Asia, and currently lives in London. He is thewinner of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize, was the editor of MichaelMarshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography and the anthology A Dick &Jane Primer for Adults, and is the author of the novella An Occupation ofAngels, a supernatural cold war thriller. His stories appear in Sci Fiction,Chizine, Postscripts, Nemonymous, Infinity Plus, Aeon, The Book of DarkWisdom, Fortean Bureau and many others, and in translation in sevenlanguages.

On the BusPatricia Russo

It had been weeks since the last time Vela had sleptfor two consecutive hours. She barely remembered whatreal sleep, natural sleep, felt like. The sleep she couldsnatch now was shallow, with just the occasional dipsinto complete unawareness, and even in the deepesttrough of her unnatural sleep, pain gnawed into everynerve. At this point, the drugs only dampened it, bluntingthe sharp rat teeth chewing into her bones. She slept,woke, took more pills, slept, woke. Food was a thing ofthe past. A couple of cases of Ensure sat shoved againstthe wall in her bedroom. She’d drunk, slow sip by slowsip, a can today, or perhaps that had been yesterday. Shecouldn’t remember the last time she’d had a bowelmovement. Probably time to give herself another enema.

I’m throwing the pills away, Vela told herself for thetenth or twentieth time. I’ll take the pain over this, overalways being on the verge of throwing up, over neverbeing able to take a damn crap. But then the savage ratteeth would bite down again, and she would rip the capoff the vial, swallow her MS-Contin, and hold down the

nausea with the entire force of her will until the morphinebegan to loosen the rats’ jaws.

She couldn’t believe people took drugs like thesewillingly. For fun. Sacred mother, for fun.

Vela slept, woke, slept, woke.Vela dreamed.Her sister was standing at a bus stop, waving

frantically at something obscure in the distance. Thanalooked skeletal and crazed, her thin, graying hair stickingup in greasy cowlicks, too much makeup on her face, skirttoo short, eyes much too bright, a burnt-orange scarflooped around her throat. Manic again. Waving at a bus?Waving frantically, in any case. Then Thana whippedaround, and stared directly into Vela’s dream-eyes.Thana’s lips formed a word, shaping it over-carefully,exaggeratedly. There was no sound in this dream, butVela got the message.

Vela woke, absolutely furious. The fury burst into ablind, animal rage. “Fucking hell, Thana!” she screamed,even though the neighbors would surely hear through theslapped-up drywall that partitioned one tiny apartmentfrom another in this building that had once, around theturn of the last century, been an upscale private house. IfThana had been standing there by her bed, at that momentVela could have gladly, cheerfully, strangled her with her

own hands. She would have found the strengthsomewhere. “Thana!” Howling like a maniac, like anidiot. Vela was embarrassed at herself, but she shouted itout anyway. “Normal fucking people use fucking e-mail!”

* * * *

They were almost twins, Vela and Thana, born onlyten months apart. For two months of every year, they werethe same age. As children, that had seemed important, aspecial bond, though Thana never let Vela forget whowas the elder. When had they begun to dream the samedreams? Before they had started school, before they hadlearned how to color inside the lines, before either of themwas sure which letter came after J. When had they starteddreaming each other’s dreams? Before either of them hadpedaled down the sidewalk on the blue bike with thewobbly training wheels, before they could tie their ownshoes, before their mother had vanished for the first time.When had Thana first inserted herself into Vela’sdreamscape? Vela remembered that one vividly. It hadhappened the day before – the night before – her eighthbirthday. Thana had appeared, bursting like a grenade inthe midst of a mundane dream, a park that turned into acity street, a cat running along the top of a fence, a

colorless, aimless, pleasant dream of no particular import.Then suddenly Thana was there, standing on top of a see-saw, though there was no one sitting on the other end tohold it down. Thana was standing on the upended tip ofthe extended board, only her toes on the wood. Thedreamscape was the park again, but different now, theplayground now, and full of color, of smell, of sound. Theseesaw was as red as blood; the air was full of the stink ofboiled hotdogs; somewhere Vela couldn’t see, childrenwere shouting gleefully. Thana stuck out her tongue andsaid, “I’m always going to be older than you.”

What killed Vela, absolutely killed her, was that shecould never do it back, never stick herself into one ofThana’s ordinary dreams and mess it up, twist it around,put a spider in it, because Thana was a shrieking crybabyabout spiders. She tried. Oh, how she tried. Night afternight, sneaking around at the edges of sleep, poking hereand there, looking for the path into her sister’sdreamworld. Vela must have tried a hundred differentzigs and a thousand different zags, but none of them ledto Thana’s sleeping self. So though they still dreamed thesame dream, quite often, and still dreamed each other’sdreams occasionally (when they were children, Thana’sdreams had left a seaweed taste in Vela’s mouth whenshe woke; as Thana grew older, and the chemicals of her

brain went to war with each other, the taste changed,veering from chokingly salt and bitter to dry and ashy, ataste with the overtone of a dead campfire, to a faintsweetness like a long-dissolved cough drop) Thana wasthe only one who could put herself in Vela’s dreams bychoice, by focused will. One time when they wereteenagers Vela had caught Thana by the wrist and theback of the neck, bent Thana’s arm up so far it had to hurtlike hell, and tried to force Thana to teach her how to doit. Thana had just laughed. Said it was a gift, one of themany gifts she had that Vela would never have, wouldnever even glimpse a clue of.

Like knowing where their mother was, and if she wasreachable. Those were two separate areas of knowledge.Thana always possessed both. Sunk in the most profounddarkness of her own brain, curled up in a fetal position,not moving, not eating, not sleeping, depression coatingher like a leaden skin a foot thick, still Thana wouldknow. Wired, frantic, frenetic, queen of the upper world,fucking everyone in sight, shoplifting with abandon,joyriding, not eating, not sleeping, so light she almostflew into the ether with every bounding step, Thana knew.

On her meds, off her meds, made no difference. Velahated the tiny, superior smirk that flicked across Thana’slips whenever someone asked after their mother. She is

asleep, but she can be woken if the need is great. She istraveling, incognito, incommunicado, but I can get amessage to her, for a price. She has retreated, she is inher cave again, best to leave her alone until the icethaws, until the first green returns from under the earth.So smug. So proud of herself.

Mom likes me best.No, their mother had assured Vela, over and over

again. I love all my children the same, the same, thesame. All my children are dear to me, all my children areprecious. I hug you all, I kiss you all, I caress you all, Imourn for you all.

Which was nice to hear, but it was bullshit. Truly.Their mother played favorites all the time, every year,every season.

On the other had, who got to be the favorite now orwho got to be favorite next would generally be a totalsurprise to everybody. Their mother’s mind was not afield easily delved or comfortably burrowed into. It wasfull of tangled roots and sleeping seeds, clods of certaintythat crumbled at the touch of a fingertips, honeycakes thatturned to stone and broke your teeth as soon as you triedto take a bite. Thana pretended she knew their mother’ssecret self, that she shared her confidences, but Velahadn’t believed that for years. It was just a quirk of fate

that Thana possessed the ability to discover their mother’slocation and availability. It did not mean she was favored,it did not mean she had been specially gifted. It was justthe luck of genetics, and it made her fucking insufferablemost of the time.

Awake, the pain waking as well, Vela walked,slowly, to her computer. She could still walk, if she heldon to things, gripped the edge of a table, kept herselfbalanced with one hand on the wall. No one was takingcare of her. She took herself to the bathroom, she openedher own cans of Ensure. The doctor phoned in her refillorders, the pharmacy delivered them. When she had lastbeen sent home, a nurse had made a point of handing hera brochure on hospice care. The brochure was still in theapartment, somewhere. But it was not time yet, Velathought. Not yet.

She sat down, slowly, carefully. Sitting hurt worsethan walking. The worst of all, though, was standing upagain after having been seated. Well, she would face thatwhen she had to, the standing up, as she faced all thingswhen she had to.

Vela turned the machine on. It was old, and slow; shewaited patiently. I’m old and slow too, now. She smiledat that. She’d been planning to buy a new computer,before the rats attacked her, first in her kidney, then in her

lung, then in her bones. A spiffy laptop, with all the bellsand whistles she’d never use or even know what theywere for. Oh well. This one, a six-year-old Dell, stillworked. It booted up. She logged on. Dial-up. Slow,slow. Had she paid the last bill? Yes, she was pretty sureshe had.

Ah, here we go. The wonderful web, the modernagora.

Read/send mail. Vela clicked. She deleted a ton ofspam. She composed an e-mail to her sister. It was shortand direct.

Fuck you, Thana. Don’t do that again. I’m too busydying to play games with you. What the fuck do you wantfrom my life? Just leave me alone, or I swear that after Idie I’ll come back and haunt your crazy ass forever andever and ever.

Vela hit Send.Your mail has been sent.She shut down the computer. She sat for a while,

gathering herself to face the agony of standing. In the end,she did stand. She went back to her bedroom, stopping toselect a fresh can of Ensure. Vanilla flavor. Tasted likechalk, actually, but then everything did. She took morepills. She went back to bed.

She slept, she woke, she slept. She did not dream.

Aware, in the loose grip of shallow sleep, of thecreases in the sheets, the tap of the wind on the pane, theticking of the wallclock in the kitchen, and of herself,Vela felt her body sinking. She’d felt this more and moreoften lately, herself sinking, slowly, easily, into the earth.She was lying on her bed, but she was floatingdownwards through dark, dry, chill soil, down, everdownwards, toward the cold and dampness and deeperdarkness below. It didn’t hurt. There was ease there in thedarkness and the cold, there was forgetting, there waspeace. But still Vela fought against it. Not yet, shethought. Not yet.

* * * *

The doorbell rang.Vela jerked awake, and white flame blazed down her

spine; jagged orbs of agony burst open within her hips.The doorbell? It wasn’t time for a delivery from thepharmacy. None of her neighbors in the rooming houseever came to visit; they’d all stopped talking to her,sliding their eyes away from hers if they met in the hall orat the mailboxes, once her hair had fallen out.

Someone had made a mistake. She was not about toget out of bed for a mistake.

She heard voices in the hall. The partitions werecheap and her hearing was good, despite the fuzziness inher brain; she recognized one of the voices, the boy, theyoung man who lived in the basement and was the half-assed super of the place. As far as Vela could recall, hehauled trash bags out to the curb a couple of times a weekand changed the occasional light bulb. She couldn’t makeout the words he was saying, but from his tone it soundedlike he was arguing with someone.

Yes, there was a someone out there, someone female.This female someone raised her voice, and Vela let out agroan that was close to a scream.

“She’s my sister!” the female someone insisted. “Youhave to let me in! I’m the next of kin! I have a right to seeher!”

Shit, shit, shit, Vela thought, as she straightened outher legs, in agony, with agonizing slowness. Go away,she wanted to yell, but there was no reasoning with Thanawhen she was like this. There had to be some place tohide. Vela recognized this as a mad thought as soon as itflashed into her mind, but still it was the only thing shecould cling to—if she could creep under the bed, if shecould crawl into the big cupboard under the kitchencounter, maybe Thana wouldn’t find her.

This is your brain on drugs, Vela told herself, but still

she slid her legs out from under the sheet, and slowlypointed her toes at the floor.

In the hall, Thana was screaming about police, aboutthe government, about black men, about their mother.

That was Thana’s brain off drugs.Not her fault, of course. Not her fault, not her fault.

Vela had told herself this a million times; for decadesshe’d struggled not to blame Thana for the problems hercondition caused, a condition Thana had not chosen,which had tortured her since adolescence, which causedThana herself the most suffering. But damn it all, it washer fault when she went off her meds.

Vela got her feet on the floor. She was shaking, andmarveled at herself. She hadn’t trembled this way whenshe got her diagnosis; she hadn’t quivered like a coldlittle chick when she was throwing up, alone, in onehospital ward after another, she hadn’t twitched a musclewhen the last oncologist told her flatly that she wasn’t agood candidate for the clinical trial she had been pinningher hopes on. Vela faced things. She got through things.Now she was shaking; this was almost amusing. DamnThana, showing up now. She really didn’t want to dealwith her sister right now. She didn’t need more crazinessin her life.

Shaking, on the edge of the bed, all Vela could do

was hope the stupid kid didn’t have a key. The landlord,whom she’d glimpsed once as he was getting into his car,lived in some leafy, swimming-pool-and-tennis-courtinfested suburb. Let him be a control freak, Vela prayed,to no one. Let him keep all the spare keys in his office, inhis den, in a kitchen drawer jumbled up with stray rubberbands and twist ties. Let him not have trusted the keys tothis step-nephew of a half-brother he’s allowing to livehere on half-rent as a favor to his grandmother.

In the hall, Thana was bouncing off the walls.Literally.

Vela shut her eyes. She couldn’t get up. Theadrenaline rushing through her veins had shoved the painback, a lot, a surprising lot. For two seconds there she’dactually felt okay, a sensation she’d never expected toexperience again, but now her neck had locked and herlower back was paralyzed. She breathed very shallowly,wary of waking the pain. She couldn’t move, and even ifshe could, the reality was there was no place to hide.

She heard the kid say, “Okay, okay! Jesus, lady!Okay!”

Shit, Vela thought.She heard one lock click open, then the other one.“Thank you very much,” Thana said, regally.Vela kept her eyes closed and waited for Thana to

find her. Vela could picture her sister sweeping past theintimidated boy, not bothering to shut the door (Velaheard it close, though; the kid must have done it),scanning the front room, sniffing at its disorder anddirtiness, peering into the bathroom, glancing into the tinykitchen . . . there weren’t that many places to look in.

Eyes closed, Vela knew her sister was standing in thedoorway of her bedroom. Take a good look, she thoughtat Thana. See this gray fuzz on my head? It might growanother quarter of an inch or so before I die. See thisbody? You can count every bone. Hey, I finally beat youin something, Thana. I’m skinnier than you now. See thisbed? This is where I live. Do you understand?

Eyes closed, Vela said, “What do you want.”“Mother’s here. She’s here!” As thrilled as a small

child at a circus. A little girl who’d seen a zebra for thefirst time. A zebra! A zebra!

Vela nodded, infinitesimally. Her neck was stilllocked up.

“She’s riding the Grant Avenue bus! Vellie, she’shere and she’s riding the bus!”

“What do you want.” Vela was tired. She was sotired. “You got my email, didn’t you? Leave me alone.”

“I want you to help me,” Thana said.Vela opened her eyes, simply in order to look Thana

in the face while she cursed her out, but when Vela sawher sister, the words died in her mouth.

* * * *

Thana sat on a hassock she’d dragged in from thefront room, smoking one cigarette after another, talkingfaster than a cartoon chipmunk on speed. Vela still hadsome Percocet left from the last drugstore delivery;technically, she was only supposed to take one if the paingot too bad more than two hours before her nextscheduled dose of oral morphine. Fuck that shit, shethought, shaking out the contents of the vial. Six. 5 mg.She swallowed them all, with a warm water chaser.

Thana jabbered and jabbered, waving her cigarette,making smoke trails in the air, making butterflies anddragons and snails, spewing nonsense, word salad, andunconsciously creating art.

“Could you get me one of those cans behind you,”Vela said, and Thana, still chattering, still smoking, rose,selected a can of Ensure, and handed it to her. Thanahadn’t bathed in days, possibly weeks; her stench tookVela’s breath away, and Vela herself had been reduced todragging baby wipes over strategic areas for quite sometime now. Thana began to sit down again, then quickly

straightened, and with a brilliant smile, popped the top ofthe can for her.

“Do you want a straw?” Thana asked.“No, thanks, it’s okay.”Her sister was going to die. Tears jumped into Vela’s

eyes; she blinked them away, but more rushed to replacethem. Damn, she hadn’t been prepared for this, despitethe dream in which Thana had appeared skeletal. Thanawas beyond skeletal; she was bones grating under a thinlayer of skin. Vela hadn’t beaten her after all; Thanacouldn’t weigh eighty pounds, if that. She was wearing ablack dress that might once have served a juniorexecutive’s wife for a company party, thirty years ago; thedress had vomit stains on the front and a greenish-whitestripe of dried pigeon crap on the back. That was allThana had on. No socks, no shoes. No underwear; no bra,not that she needed one; her chest was as flat as a faminevictim’s. Thana’s feet were red and black; black fromdirt, red from the wounds that walking barefoot in the cityinflicts. Her fingernails were broken, her arms blistered.When she opened her mouth, Vela glimpsed the tell-talewhite of thrush. Her teeth were mostly gone. A lot of herhair had fallen out. What was left, Thana had tied backwith a piece of dirty string.

“We’re the same age again,” Thana said, smiling

happily.Vela began to object, to correct her, but then realized

her sister was right. Her birthday had arrived, andpassed . . . two weeks ago. They were the same age.

Thana scattered ashes over the floor, and talkedrapidly about terrorists, whales, ambergris, ripping offmen’s penises, their mother on the bus, beehives, andwheat.

“I sacrificed a cat,” she said. “But I don’t think it’lldo any good, because it was a calico.”

“Thana, you need to see a doctor,” Vela said.There was more than one way to die. Vela had always

known this. The earth takes everyone; all sink into theground, all are embraced by Hades and folded into thedarkness. She had not, until today, realized that illnessesof the mind could lead to that darkness as inexorably asillnesses of the body. I should have paid more attention,shouldn’t I? she thought, listlessly. She’s my sister, afterall. But Vela had always had her own problems, as everyperson did, and her own problem now was too urgent forher to care very much that Thana was pacing her on theidentical path.

“Mother’s on the bus!” Thana exclaimed, grinning anearly toothless grin.

“Thana, you need to go to a hospital. You are very

sick.” Vela paused. A little bit of her listlessness waslifting. Damn, damn. Maybe it wasn’t too late for Thana,if she got help, got treatment, right away. She was goingto say it, she was steeling herself to do so, but Thana beather to it.

“I’m going to die,” Thana said. For an instant, sheblinked the mania back, forcing it to the edges of hereyes. “I know. I’ve been dying for a long time, Vela.”

Vela supposed that that was, in fact, true.“I need your help,” Thana said.“Why? For what?” Look at me, she wanted to say,

I’m dying, too, I’ve been dying for months, I’m end-stage, haven’t you noticed? But she didn’t. The wayThana looked right now, Vela thought her sister mightvery well beat her into the grave.

“To get on the bus.”“No,” Vela said. Instantly. Automatically. She could

barely walk across the apartment. Stairs were animpossibility now. Standing for more than a few minuteswas an impossibility. Going out into the world? Thebiggest impossibility.

“Mom’s here,” Thana said, quite softly, and Velabelieved her. After all, Thana always did know where andwhen and in what state of being their mother was. “Thisis our last chance, I think.”

Vela shook her head.“Don’t you want to see her again?”Vela thought. She shouldn’t have. She shouldn’t have

allowed herself to entertain the idea. Mistake, mistake. Apunch of grief hit her square in the heart; longing filledher throat. Yes, she wanted to see their mother again, ofcourse she did, she wanted to touch her hand, kiss her;she wanted to feel her mother’s hand on her ownforehead, her mother’s thin soft lips against her cheek.

Thana started to cry, tears streaming unchecked, hereyes open wide and unblinking. “Help me,” she said. “Idon’t want to be dead forever.”

“Oh, Thana,” Vela said, when she could speak again.“You don’t think—you don’t really believe? She won’t.She won’t do it. It hurts her too much, don’t youunderstand? It hurt her too much.”

“Mom always loved you the most,” Thana said.“She’d do it for you.”

Vela took a small sip from her can of Ensure. She setit down on the night stand next to her bed. She had neverhated her sister more than she did right at that moment.She’d go after me if you asked her to, was obviouslywhat Thana meant, and of course, in the mush thatfunctioned as Thana’s brain, that sort of thinking passedfor logical. I want, so I must get. I need, so I must have,

somehow, someway.“I’m dying, too, you know,” Vela said.Thana just looked at her blankly. Irrelevant

information, bouncing off her self-centered consciousness,not penetrating.

“Help me get on the bus, and I promise I won’t pokeinto your dreams anymore,” Thana said, and flashed her agummy grin.

Hatred. Hatred blazing like a cauldron of white-hotcoals. Vela put her hand over her eyes, and thought, No.But that no was small and weak, powerless against thesharp, fierce crystal of hope that Thana’s insane wordshad caused to spring to life in Vela’s heart.

Mother might, that hope sang. Mother might, shemight. She’d said she never would again, but a lot of timehad passed since then. Mother might. She might comeafter me.

If she saw me. If she knew. If she really loved me.Mother might descend and find me, take my hand anddraw me back out of the cold and the darkness, return meto the light.

No, Vela thought again, but the no was drowned by aflood of hope, sweeping, intoxicating, sweet, and for amoment the pain, all the pain in her bones and in hersoul, dissolved.

She let her hand fall, and looked at her sister. Thanawas a scarecrow. There was no way the two of themcould make their way to a bus stop, no way on earth.

“You’re going to have to help me get dressed,” Velasaid.

Thana nodded. She understood that.“Do you have money for a taxi?”Thana nodded again. Wet trails streaked her cheeks,

but she was beaming like a child who’d just beenpromised her very own pony.

A scarecrow, a bundle of sticks.“When was the last time you ate?” Vela asked. She

meant to be kind, as much as she could be with hatredand hope tearing each other to pieces inside her chest; shemeant to say there were probably a few cans of soup inthe kitchen, some fruit that hadn’t decayed yet. Raisins.Vela was sure she had a box of raisins somewhere.

Thana bolted up from the hassock, shrieking.“No, no! You can’t eat! If you eat you have to stay!”But you’re not dead yet, Thana, Vela wanted to say,

but she just sighed and held her tongue, closed her eyes,and waited until her sister stopped screaming.

* * * *

In coat, hat, gloves, and scarf, Vela sat on the busstop bench, and shivered. It was the scrag-end of April,and the sky was light blue and dotted with wispy clouds.A nice day, but Vela shivered, and tried to stay awake.She’d taken more morphine pills before leaving theapartment, and the six Percocet she’d downed before werestill creeping through her system. The pain was fierce, buther head was fuzzy. My brain on drugs, my body ondrugs. Had she been home, Vela would have napped.

Vela knew what she must look like to the peoplepassing by, most of them jacket-less, some in t-shirts andshorts. The healthy folks avoided her eyes, glancedquickly away from her covered hair, her shaking body.

Thana had carried her down the stairs. Amazing, thestrength in that wasted, mad body. She hadn’t evenasked, just bent and scooped Vela up in her arms, andVela had been too shocked to protest, and then tooterrified to object, in case she broke Thana’s fragileconcentration. But they’d made it to the street, where thecab was waiting, and the cab had brought them here, andnow they were waiting for the bus.

Thana had put on some of Vela’s old clothes, a denimskirt that hug loosely on her hips, a silky black blouse.They’d found a pair of sandals that fitted her, and afisherman’s cap Vela had once bought on a whim and

never worn. The cap covered Thana’s scant, greasy hair,and made her look jaunty.

Thana paced up and down, smoking one cigaretteafter another from the pack she’d bought at the newsstand across the street. She was coming down off thehighest precipice of the manic stage, taking the first smallsteps down the scarp of frenzy. But soon, perhaps withinhours, that downward journey would turn into a tumble,the tumble into a freefall, and when Thana crashed at thebottom this time, she would not get up again. WhenThana had carried her down the stairs of the roominghouse, Vela had noted that her sister’s breath smelled likewarm bread. She knew that this meant Thana was welldown the path of starvation, muscles consumingthemselves, her body cannibalizing itself to ward offdeath for a day or two longer.

One bus passed, then another. Each time Velaglanced at Thana, and each time Thana shook her head.

Then, abruptly, Thana flicked her cigarette away.“Can you stand?”

Fuzzy-brained, half-drifting, Vela blinked hard.“What?”

“This is it!”And there was a bus coming, not a metro bus, but one

of those private jitneys that had popped up in the city in

the last few years, driven by immigrants, a lot of themsporting a bright coat of paint to make them stand outfrom the crowd, most of them with women’s nameslettered on the side, Vanessa, Amelia, Catalina. This vanwas purple, and could, if all the passengers held theirbreaths, perhaps fit twenty people. The name blazoned onthe side was Appolo, and Vela burst out laughing.

“This is it!” Thana shouted, waving the jitney down.Vela found herself on her feet. She had stood up.

Something inside her spine broke with a stabbing pain,and for a moment she could not breathe. A vertebra,crumbling to fragments?

Thana took her arm and helped her up the jitney’s twosteps. On these buses, you paid the fare when you got off,Vela knew. It must have been a tradition the drivers hadbrought with them from their home countries. Certainly itwas not the American way, nor was it the way of theferryman. Cash in advance, or you stayed on the shoreand wailed for eternity, that was his way.

Their mother was sitting in the aisle seat in the secondrow, a paper shopping bag at her feet, so full of fruit andvegetables that it seemed the bag must burst open thenext time the bus jolted over a pothole. Vela looked at hermother, and her eyes swam. For an instant, her motherwore a mare’s head; in the next instant, she was an old,

gray woman who lived on a pension and babysat herneighbor’s children for spare cash, in the next a womantoo large, too massive to sit in such a cramped, skimpyseat, her head touching the ceiling, the sheaves of wheatwoven into her tresses glowing like gold.

There were two free seats in the back of the bus.Thana held Vela’s hand as they made their way to them.

“She saw me, didn’t she?” Thana whispered.“She saw us,” Vela confirmed.They rode the bus. Their mother’s back was massive,

broader than any human’s, male or female, and in thenext moment it was a narrow, humped old lady’s back,bending under the weight of years and osteoporosis.

When the bus halted at a red light, their mother turnedaround and looked at her daughters.

Thana lifted her hand and waved. Vela remained still.She met her mother’s eyes without flinching, and tried notto let the plea in her heart show in her eyes.

The next time the bus stopped, their mother turnedaround again. Thana jiggled in her seat, excited, hopeful.Vela met her mother’s eyes again, saw the sorrow there.This was how she always remembered her mother, as onewhose grief was constant, eternal. Even in the bright,blooming days of spring, their mother’s grief abided.

“She’ll get off at the end of the block,” Thana said,

but their mother didn’t. Two other passengers did, one ofthe departing men leaving the seat in front of Vela andThana free. Their mother rose and squeezed down thenarrow aisle, sat down directly in front of her daughters.She did not speak. What could she say? How are you?Nice to see you again? Their mother could see how theywere, how they both were, and it could not have beennice, not nice at all. To outlive one’s children must be thegreatest pain a mother could feel, and their mother hadalready felt it, many times, in her long life. The first timehad almost driven her mad. She had retreated to a cave,had not emerged for a year.

Thana nudged Vela, hard. Tell her, tell her. Ask her.Wait, Vela mouthed at her sister.

Vela couldn’t help herself, couldn’t resist. She put outone finger and laid it gently on her mother’s shoulder. Itfelt as hard and cold as marble.

“It is the nature of things, that all go below,” theirmother said, after they had ridden on for a while.

“I know,” Vela whispered.Thana was leaning forward, eager, eyes bright again,

mouth opening to jabber and chatter, to plead like a smallchild for a longed-for, but never promised, treat. Vela puther hand on her sister’s arm, and squeezed hard. Shhh,she mouthed. Give her time. Thana understood, and kept

silent. But then Thana trusted her.Their mother turned around again. Once more she

was an old woman, a little old lady whom hundreds,thousands in this city passed every day without a secondglance. She looked at Thana, and she looked at Vela, bothequally, both evenly, both with sorrow.

Then she rose, and took up her shopping bag. Thanajumped, about to leap up, but Vela held her back, puttingevery last drop of her strength into the grip she kept onher sister’s arm. “Wait,” she whispered.

“Wait,” their mother said, as she moved up the aisle,to pay the bus driver her dollar and exit. “Wait for me.”

Vela knew their mother had spoken to only one ofthem.

Thana, though, relaxed immediately. She turned toVela with a triumphant smile. Their mother’s words werea promise, a vow, one they both knew she would notbreak.

Vela’s emotions were more muted. She watched hermother depart, watched her wait on the sidewalk until thejitney had passed. Was she trying to peer through thegrimy window to catch a last glimpse of both of herdaughters? Was she still making her decision, her choice,or had she settled on which of them she would followdown before she left the bus?

“She said yes,” Thana whispered gleefully. Vela, toher own surprise, felt no glee, only surprise and pain. Shemust love us, she thought with wonder and awe, if she’swilling to make that heartbreaking journey again. By theair and the water and the fire, how strong their motherwas. Vela had never possessed even a shadow of thatstrength.

One of them. That had been clear from the tone underthe words.

Vela and Thana rode the bus to the end of the line,paid the driver, and then rode the bus back. Vela did notexpect to get off the bus; this was her last trip, her lastview of the upper world. The darkness was dragging herdown, pulling on every limb, inexorably. “Mother’sgetting on again, at Rose Street,” Thana said, and Velanodded. I might live until Rose Street, she thought.

Wait for me.I’m waiting, Mother, she thought.Mother, let it be me.Beside her, Thana shredded a cigarette she couldn’t

smoke, stuffed the tobacco into her mouth, chewed it. Shetapped her fingers on the headrest of the seat in front ofher. She jiggled her feet. She, too, was waiting. “Youknow what they say,” Thana said, cheerfully. “If it’s notone thing, it’s your mother.”

Vela nodded. The darkness was wrapping around her,the darkness and the cold.

And here was Rose Street, coming up. And there wasan old woman standing at the bus stop.

Waiting, waiting, waiting, all three of them waiting.In a moment, at most two, the waiting would be over, inone way or another, for all of them.

Patricia Russo was born in Queens. She’s been writing stories for a longtime. She also teaches ESL to adults and occasionally commits a random actof violence. Currently she lives in NJ. Other stories of her may be found inthe anthology Corpse Blossoms, and issues of City Slab, Tales of theUnanticipated, and Not One of Us.

Light of the MoonKaren Anne Mitchell

“I’m pleased to see that the medications areworking.”

I watch the doctor as he speaks. He seems far away.They tell me that’s part of the sickness, that sense of

distance, and it makes sense. Familiar things are hard totouch, hard to taste and hard to smell and feel. Hard to seesometimes. The world spins, runs out of control, takes ona texture that is confusion and terror.

Madness.I’m grateful they can treat this. And I’m grateful, you

know, that they brought me back. It was hard for a while,and for a long time they had to keep me restrained,wrapped up tightly. I can still remember that, the strapsagainst me as I lay there on the bed. Sometimes Iscreamed, and it was very dark, too, in those days. Butthey gave me my meds and after a while it grew lighterand I came back.

I’m back. I want to be back. I don’t want to go thereagain. I don’t want to be there.

It’s too clear, what I remember.

“You need to take them every day,” the doctor issaying. “It’s important. With your condition it’sespecially important.”

“I will,” I promise him.“Good. The staff at the halfway house will help you

remember. They’re there to help you.”There’s the discharge paperwork to be done and then

he walks me to the front of the hospital, through the bigdoor. It’s very thick, like a cell door, and it locks. I’ll beback, not to the ward but to his office, for more therapy.He wants to keep up with me and check on my progress.It’s part of being an outpatient, he says. We don’t want todrop you back into the real world without support.

Real world. I think about this as they drive me to thehalfway house. I’m back in the real world.

I’m going out. I’m going to be free.

* * * *

They kept us naked.I guess it was a power thing. They liked power. They

liked being able to tell us what to do. They likedhumiliating us. I think that was actually the hardest partof all, of being powerless. Of being unfree.

Freedom is power. It’s the one power you have to

have, if you’re going to actually be alive.Am I alive?Am I real?Back in the enclave we all thought about that a lot.

We talked about it as we sat together under the light ofthe nebula. Helen spoke.

“They say it’s real. They say it isn’t a dream.”“But if they’re in the dream, if they’re the dream?

Can we trust what they say?”Helen fingered her collar. It was thin and barely

visible, like a tiny choker around her neck. “Can we trustanything?” she asked.

I shuddered, wrapped my arms tightly around myselfand held myself close. The world, this alien world, feltdifferent. It felt like a dream.

A nightmare.

* * * *

They’ve been expecting me at the halfway house, havea room and a bed ready for me. The place is an oldbuilding with three floors: a kitchen and living roomdownstairs, bedrooms and bathrooms above these. Myroommate is a quiet girl named Francis. I guess I’m quiettoo. People like us often are, unless we’re screaming.

The plumbing rattles, too.After I arrive I allow myself the luxury of sitting on

the grass in the back yard, just sitting there and watchingthe sky, the birds in the tree, smelling the air. It’s been solong, you know. I’ve missed you. I’m sorry I went away.

The world does not answer. It doesn’t need to. It justneeds to be real.

It has to be real.It has to.

* * * *

“Taiyiha.”I looked up. The Adhal was glowing slightly. I was

very tired.“Pay attention, Taiyiha.”“Please,” I said. “No . . . .”“You must learn. You must learn to obey us and the

Usahar. That is what you are for.”I looked away, afraid and alone. The Adhal extended

a tendril and I gasped as it touched me. There was powerto their touch, power to them.

The power to bring us to their world.“Are you obedient, Judy? Do you obey?”The Usahar were merciless. It’s wrong, what they do

to us. Wrong wrong wrong wrong . . . .

* * * *

“Your other world again,” the doctor says. “Have youbeen dreaming?”

He seems a little closer today as his questions press atme. I’ve been tugging at my hair, sitting in his office,sitting in front of him.

“Yeah.”“Nightmares?”I nod.“You know,” he says, “dreaming is normal. It’s

natural. Even nightmares happen sometimes. Tell meabout your nightmares.”

A moment passes. It’s hard to collect my thoughts.“I’m back there,” I say finally. “It’s always back there.”

“The aliens?”“Yeah.”“Tell me about them.”I shudder. “They took me, took us. They changed us.

They remade us.”“Why? Did they ever say why?”“No. They just made us obey them.”He nods. “I wonder,” he says, “if they’re a metaphor,

a way to see something deeper.”“I don’t understand.”“Sickness—any sickness but especially this kind—is

a type of bondage. You’re fighting against it for control.Maybe these aliens are actually your sickness, a way foryou to visualize it. A personification, if you will.”

“They aren’t real?”“Not in the sense of my desk or this room or this

hospital, no. But they are something, Judy, and you canturn that against them. Tell them what they are, that theyare only your sickness. Tell them you’re not going to letthem destroy you.”

* * * *

“I think it’s real,” Helen said. I regarded her; she wason her hands and knees, a dusting-cloth in her hand, and Iknelt beside her as we worked. We had been ordered todo some cleaning in the palace and the sunlight poured inthrough the windows between the high arches of the hall,its beams identifying little motes of dust in the air. TheAdhal made us do little chores like this sometimes, tokeep us busy when we weren’t serving elsewhere. Thesky outside was blue-orange and clouds had gatheredover the distant edge of the valley.

“Why?” I asked. “It feels—”“I know. But it has to be real. It has to be.” Her voice

had a sudden tension to it.“Why?”She stopped, still holding the soft cloth, and looked

over at me.“Because you have to be real, Judy. You’re my friend.

You have to be real. I need you to be real or I don’t thinkI’ll make it.”

* * * *

“What if they are real?” I ask.“Your aliens? The Adhal? The Usahar?”“Yes.”The doctor considers this for a moment. “It’s a

circular question. Have you ever heard the story ofZhuangzi and the butterfly?”

“I don’t understand.”“It’s an old Chinese story about dreaming. Zhuangzi

dreams he is a butterfly. Or is he a butterfly dreaming thathe is Zhuangzi?”

“So how do I know what I am?” I ask. “Am I really aslave? Are you only a dream?”

“Do you want me to be a dream?” he answers.

I cover my eyes because the tears come. The fear andhumiliation are close. “No. I want you to be real. I don’twant to be a slave. I don’t want to be a Taiyiha.”

“Look at me, Judy.”I do.“I think you are real, here. I think this world is real. I

think I am real. And this world is predictable and logical;it works as it does, and we can treat your illness here.This world is sane. That’s why it’s so important that youtake your meds. Do you understand?”

But what about Helen?

* * * *

She’s slender and she’s blonde and she is my friend.At night, when we sit together under the light of thenebula, she holds me, and I hold her. I know what they’vedone to her because they’ve done the same things to me.

We are Taiyiha. That’s what the Adhal call us, theirslaves.

And we have our laments. We chant them together.

He had a name, the one I love.He had a smile, a gentle kiss.He was a friend, loyal and strong.

He was a love, my love.Where are you now?Do you think of me sometimes?

Later, Helen stirs a bit. I feel her move. Her voice issoft as she speaks.

“I tried to talk to you today but you didn’t answer,”she says. “You went away.”

“Did I?”“You don’t remember?”I remember the doctor’s office, his words. Meds.

Sickness. You have a condition, he said.Helen seems distant.“I’m very ill,” I explain. “This is all a dream.”“No.”

* * * *

They found me outside the halfway house, just sittingon the ground. One of the attendants —James—crouchedbeside me.

“It’s time to come in, Judy,” he said. “Med call.”“Look,” I answered, pointing upward.The moon is full.

* * * *

“You think this is a dream,” the Adhal tells me. “Youdeny us.”

“Yes.”“Interesting. On what basis?” It grazes at my skin

with a tendril, and I cry out softly. “Does that not feelreal, Judy?”

“I have a condition,” I answer, trembling.“Yes. You are a slave. You belong to us. You serve

us. That is why we brought you here.”“No. I’m sick. That’s all.”“You think you can deny us? Deny the Usahar? Hide

in a fantasy world? Foolish girl.”It touches me again, more harshly this time, its power

flowing through me. It will exact its price for mydisobedience. When at last I am returned to the enclaveHelen is there, and she holds me tightly as I weep.

* * * *

“They’re punishing you?” the doctor asked.“Yes.”“How?”“They touch me.”“That’s all?”“They’re Adhal. They have power.”

He sighed, sat back in his chair, his pen wiggling abit in his hand. “I don’t know about that,” he said.“Perhaps it is only your sickness that is punishing you.You don’t want to be there, on that other world, but itkeeps pulling you back. The staff at the halfway house tellme you sit alone a lot, that you don’t participate in groupactivities. You need to socialize with others, Judy. Theyhelp anchor you to the here and now. The meds areimportant, but they aren’t everything.”

“Are they anything?” I asked.

* * * *

Darkness. I remember that first, how everything wentblack. I had been out for a run, jogging, and then it wasdark, and then I was here and the Adhal were here.

We have remade you, they said to us. You are foreverdifferent, forever ours, forever transformed in body andsoul.

Why? I asked once.They never answered, never explained. Part of the

pain is not knowing why. I remember that, their silence.And I remember what they did to me. I remember

how it felt, to be turned inside out, to be taken apart,reassembled. Now I’m what they want me to be. Why do

I remember all that?“It hurt,” Helen says when I mention it. She has her

hands drawn close to her chest. “It hurt for a long timewhen they changed me and now I’m not what I wasbefore. They made me their slave and I can’t go back.They make me obey them.” She turns her head and looksat me. “Are you really going home when you go away?”she asks.

“I don’t know.”“Do you see the moon?”I nod.“What’s it like?”“Like it was,” I say. “It’s just like it was.”Helen moves into my embrace. Her skin is very warm.“I don’t want to be what I am now,” she tells me.

“It’s too hard. I wish I could be something else.Somebody else. Anything but Taiyiha.”

* * * *

Anything.Choose, the sickness says. I give you this chance. Are

you free, or slave? What is free and what is slave? Whatdoes it mean, this idea? What is more precious in life?

Wherein does mercy lie?

Days pass and I consider this. The nebula and themoon appear and vanish in succession, and I stare ateach.

Anything.I want to be ill. I want reality to be the sickness, the

madness, the confusion and the pain and the horror of it,because if it is the sickness then at least I am free. If I amsane, if there are no meds and no doctor and no halfwayhouse, then I am a slave, serving the Adhal and theUsahar forever, humiliated, reduced, without hope.Taking meds forever is the definition of my freedom;sanity is slavery.

I pray every day for madness.I am sitting in the courtyard of the enclave with Helen

and the others, the soft light of the nebula glowingoverhead. We are naked, and without thinking I reach upand touch at the thin collar I wear. Around me the voicesof the others, soft and rhythmic, fill the night. It is alament, and I mouth the final stanza from memory.

Under the light of the moon,I will stand.I will stand.And it will bathe me, will wash over me, will cleanse

me.

It will cleanse my soul and call my name,gently on the wind.

We pause as the lament requires, always waiting forthat time that never comes, then speaking again when thesilence brings no answer.

And then and then and only then,will I know that I am home.

Born and raised in the Southwest, Karen Anne Mitchell has severaladvanced degrees in History and a love of storytelling that goes back tochildhood. Her work often focuses on the darker sides of human nature andthe subversion of literary and dramatic tropes, and her first novel, TheUsahar, has been compared to the writings of Tanith Lee and CordwainerSmith. In lieu of cats, she lives surrounded by books.

The Novel of the HolocaustStewart O’Nan

THE NOVEL OF THE HOLOCAUST is coming!Yessiree—alive, alive, alive! SEE the freak of thetwentieth century, the soul-searching survivor of theultimate battle of good and evil! HEAR his pitiful story oftorture and degradation! THRILL to the savage, inhumanacts of his captors! Yes, he’s coming, one commandperformance only, the sideshow setting up its tent in themeadow by the river. All day children have been racingtheir bikes across the bridge, fighting to peek under thecanvas. Come one, come all!

No, it’s not that bad, the Novel of the Holocaustthinks. But close. He’s been chosen by Oprah, lifted up,summoned, so he’s going. He leaves his walk-up inLondon while fog still hangs over Leicester Square,drenching the statues, the pigeons jabbing at his newshoes, bought just for this trip. He’s got money now, anda famous name (though no face). He takes a taxi toGatwick and pauses at the duty-free, the bottles of Scotchlike parting gifts.

Irony is never lost on the Novel of the Holocaust. He

grins at practically anything, yet is never more thanamused. The Novel of the Holocaust is sober, and dresseswell. If he should laugh out loud, people would turn andstare, as at a crazy old lady. Walking through the airport,the Novel of the Holocaust talks to himself, rememberingstorefronts and round, growling buses, letters in precisehandwriting—the age that passed while he was wakingup, shrugging off the losses of his boyhood. Now he isbeing celebrated for them. Waiting at the gate, he stopswatching the miniature, repeating news and stares at hishands, wonders if this trip is worthwhile. He is used to aquiet life, his feelings for the world buried in his writing.Flying makes him nervous, and when the Novel of theHolocaust uses the restroom, he washes his hands beforeand after, alert for germs.

Of course the Novel of the Holocaust is nostalgic andmelancholy, struck dumb by so many families parting asthe plane boards. Children cling to their mothers’ necksand scream until the grandparents haul them off, makethem wave goodbye. The Novel of the Holocaust doesn’tapprove.

First class is new to him, a mark of how his stock hasrisen—utterly inexplicable, the result of a few phonecalls. It’s like Hollywood, he thinks; one day he’s astarlet, the next a star. The screen at the front of the cabin

shows the soft arc they’re traveling, and their speed, thetemperature outside (minus 500). The hours to New Yorktick off like a bomb. The Novel of the Holocaust can’tsleep in his seat, drifts off to wake abruptly, his facefalling forward.

The Novel of the Holocaust comes from an islandwith a view of a rocky shore, huts, goats tinkling as theynavigate steep paths. The country people are simple andwise as mud. Until this, they considered The Novel of theHolocaust a failure, a child who knew too much and didtoo little. The Novel of the Holocaust has no brothers orsisters, no wife or husband, no children, only lovers, andthose are inconstant, staying a week on their way toGreece or the Middle East. They see the Novel of theHolocaust as harmless and a little outdated, good-heartedbut hardly charming, the devotion he instills lukewarm. Afriend, they say; I’m staying with a friend. The Novel ofthe Holocaust makes them breakfast and sees themdownstairs to the taxi in the rain. He holds an umbrella,helps with the door, kisses them meagerly through thewindow, then climbs back up to the flat, gray in themorning light, the radiators hissing. The Novel of theHolocaust has the whole day and no plans.

Sometimes the Novel of the Holocaust goes tomuseums, hoping to meet people. Sometimes the Novel of

the Holocaust doesn’t leave the flat for a week, reads thepaper cover to cover, flips on BBC 3 and lies on thecouch, watching Antonioni, falling asleep. Sometimes theNovel of the Holocaust closes his eyes in the bathtub andsinks under, his thin hair lifting like kelp, and imagines astranger’s hand lurking above the surface, waiting to pushhis head down again.

Maybe fame will change the Novel of theHolocaust. The money is unimportant, but maybe peoplewill see him differently. There will be fan letters, perhaps,or even fans themselves ringing the bell—girls atuniversity and lunatics drawn by the controversy, crabbedscholars ready to dispute obscure points.

In the Novel of the Holocaust, the hero is a teenagernamed Franz Ignaz. Franz Ignaz comes from a citywithout goats and mud and his parents think he’swonderful. Franz Ignaz is a musical prodigy, a violinistsince the age of four, an unsurpassed interpreter ofMoscheles and Mendelssohn. In the shaking candlelitbasement of a safe house, he plays their banned works forfamilies on the run from the Gestapo.

The Novel of the Holocaust took piano lessons atpublic school but quit in the middle of Czerny’s exercises.His teacher said he had a passable sense of meter, but noreal ear. To truly play, he said, you have to start much

younger, and how could the Novel of the Holocaustexplain his parents’ house, the damp of the sea and theone shelf of wrinkled encyclopedias he read over andover? How could he say he was a dull child, and clumsy,always doing the wrong thing and then getting yelled at?

In the Novel of the Holocaust, the families can’tapplaud Franz Ignaz without giving themselves away, sothey each touch his cheek, look into his eyes as a way ofsaying thanks. Later, in the camps, the same gesture isheartrending, and then brutal, when the commandant usesit. The Novel of the Holocaust’s mother did the samething when the Novel of the Holocaust had disappointedher or done something wrong (which was all the time).He tried to avoid her eyes, because they shamed him, andshe took her hand and placed it on the side of his face andturned him toward her and then looked directly into him,and he could not keep his secrets. How this became sucha large part of the book, the Novel of the Holocaust isn’tsure, and what exactly it means escapes him. Guilt,certainly, or maybe an accusation against her, but whenhe thinks of his mother, she is blameless. Certainly shehas nothing to do with the six million dead, and tocompare his lonely childhood to genocide is an affront, anobscenity. But that is what he’s done.

The flight attendants come around with hot towels,

and the Novel of the Holocaust daubs his face with thelemony scent. After seven hours sitting, this is supposedto refresh him. He is supposed to be on an importantmorning show in less than an hour and he needs to figureout what he wants to say.

They will ask him about his parents—obliterated, likethe island village, the goats roaming wild in themountains, sleeping in the kitchens. They will say themagic name of the camp he survived as a child (no, hewill not let them film the number bled green and near-indecipherable on his arm) and ask him to tell his story.

“In the book,” he will say, bringing everything backto Franz Ignaz and Mendelssohn. He will championMoscheles, a composer few know, and while this tacticwill siphon off some time, it will not save him from hisown story, the lines and insane paperwork separating theuseful from the dead. He was a country boy, used to work,his calves bulging from climbing the switchbacked paths.His parents were old (though, as he explains this tohimself, he realizes they were ten years younger than he isnow). It is not a story that interests the Novel of theHolocaust. It was just bad luck, and that is not what thebook is about.

Because the Novel of the Holocaust is magical. In theNovel of the Holocaust, Franz Ignaz meets a friend in the

camps, a chess prodigy named David. David is eight andon the verge of becoming a grandmaster; his father andhis father’s father were champions in Breslau. This is notfar from the truth, though the Novel of the Holocaustnever met the boy, who was actually from anotherbarracks. He was Latvian and his name started with a K.Kolya? He should remember. In real life, the boy wasmachinegunned with several hundred other children, butin the Novel of the Holocaust, he and Franz Ignaz havelong talks about the logic of the Nazis, and how, byteasing out the metaphysical flaw in their rationalism,they can save everyone. Obviously this is comic, andwhile this reasoning didn’t obtain in the real world of thecamps, it holds a deeply human and philosophical truththat works brilliantly in the Novel of the Holocaust.

They’re coming down into New York now, LongIsland beside them most of the approach. The Novel ofthe Holocaust’s ears pop unevenly, and he has to dig apinkie into one. When the plane touches down, hisneighbors applaud, and he thinks: Why?

The media escort from his American publishers iswaiting for him at the gate, his book held up so he canrecognize her. She wants to take his carry-on but hedefeats her easily. Outside, the network limo is his, aleather cavern of a backseat complete with a bar, a TV

tuned—permanently, he supposes—to the station he willbe on.

“How’s the tour going?” his escort asks, and heexplains that this is his first stop, that usually he dreadsthese things, that he rarely leaves his apartment. Herealizes how pathetic this sounds, even if it is true. Whydoes he feel the need to confess to strangers?

“You must be thrilled with the Oprah thing. We are.”“It was quite a surprise,” he admits. ”I must confess I

don’t know much about the show.”“It’s great,” she assures him. “Everyone watches it.”Queens is flying by, and suddenly the Novel of the

Holocaust is ravenously hungry. He would like to go tothe hotel and sleep. Already he misses London, the viewof the park from the tall windows, his kettle whistling onthe burner, calling him away from the table, drawing himback again, briefly, into the real world.

A cemetery a mile long slides by, hills dotted withcrosses—how many thousand?—and then the city rises infront of him like a fence, the river blue beneath them. Hehas been here before, a guest of his publishers, but neveras a celebrity (though, oddly, he feels even less real now,more of an imposter). From the bridge, the facades glintprettily in the orange morning light, and the city seemshis. He wonders if this is how power feels.

How many people live here—ten, twelve million? TheNovel of the Holocaust imagines the dead taking theirplaces, the apartments and office buildings filled withthem, elevators hopelessly trying to close their doors.

It’s a hazard of the profession, he thinks, or is it justhis life, the fact that he was lucky (unlucky) enough tosurvive? He’s here, the Novel of the Holocaust, about tobe beamed across the United States, and he needs to bewise. The responsibility is impossible. What in the worldcan he say to these people?

They will want to talk about the movie, whether he’shappy with the director (no) or with the script, a quilt ofthe simplest clichés. They will ask if the movie will befaithful to the book. Contractually, he is free to speak hismind, but his agent has counseled him to either say nicethings or be pleasantly non-committal, take the questionto the next abstract level of literature versus popular art.

In the movie of the Novel of the Holocaust, there arelove scenes in the bunks. Franz Ignaz and David areteenagers, and both are in love with the same girl, who inthe book is mentioned only twice. The Nazis will all beplayed by British actors, and the boys by two AmericanTV stars. The director has decided the whole thing shouldtake place in the summer, for a more striking contrast—birdsong and sun through the trees. He sees them using

klezmer music for the village scenes and a broodingsymphonic score for the camps. (Would, perhaps,Mendelssohn be appropriate? the Novel of the Holocaustwanted to ask.) All of this the director included in a long,episodic letter a month after he signed on to the project.The Novel of the Holocaust hasn’t heard from him since,only vague updates from his agent.

“Would you sign my copy for me?” his escort asks,and automatically he takes the book from her, finds thetitle page and crosses out his name. This is what he ishere to do.

“Thanks,” she says. “I haven’t actually had a chanceto read it yet, but it looks interesting. I really likedSophie’s Choice.”

“Never read it,” he says, getting her back, but shetrumps him, telling him he should see the movie, thatMeryl Streep is really good in it.

They’re into Manhattan now, traffic nosing light tolight, the sidewalks mobbed. All dead, he thinks, picturesthem all falling, bodies slumped over the steering wheels.Maybe then they would understand.

That’s what he’ll tell them! Imagine everyone in thecity dead, the doormen and the matrons walking theirdogs, the bicycle messengers.

What a pleasant guest he’ll be.

On the way to the studio in midtown they pass ahundred coffee shops. A man on one corner is eatingsome kind of sandwich, and it is all the Novel of theHolocaust can do to keep from leaping out and snatchingit from him, stuffing it in his mouth with greasy fingers.

“Can we stop and pick up something to eat?” he asks,but there’s no time.

“They’ll have a platter of something in the greenroom,” she assures him, and they do, a tray of uncutbagels and squeeze packets of cream cheese. The coffeetastes like varnish. Someone with the show takes his armand whisks him away to make-up, where he sits in abarber’s chair before a mirror. The woman working onhim says nothing; she’s busy talking to another womanabout her hours, how she wants to trade her shift withsomeone. The Novel of the Holocaust sits there with thebib protecting his suit, looking at the powdered androuged old whore before him. It was all so long ago, hethinks, but that is not what they want to hear. Andhonestly, that is not true, not true at all.

They will ask him about the research, the crumblingfiles and filmy carbons he parsed, the thousands ofpictures in the British Museum—all the while flippingthose images like a narrated slide show. In the Novel ofthe Holocaust, Franz Ignaz tries to find out what

happened to all the people in his apartment building.With the help of David and a kapo, he tracks them alldown, and soon, after trading favors and paying off theright people, they’re reunited—reconstituted into onebarracks, a community again. They pretend they’re stillliving in Danzig. The camp and what’s happening leadthem to believe in this, a kind of mass hallucination thathelps keep their family intact.

Of course, the last people Franz Ignaz finds are hisown mother and father, starving and doomed to a workdetail. Once they are no longer useful, they will be killed,so Franz Ignaz must find a way to smuggle them food.

Did the Novel of the Holocaust ever have a chance tohelp his own mother and father? Would he rather havedied with them? These are the old questions, maybe theones the book was supposed to answer. But of course, itcouldn’t. It was just a book.

“You’re done,” the woman says, unclipping the bib,and he’s lead back to the green room, where an athlete ofsome sort and his escort have taken his space on thecouch.

“Two minutes,” a man with a headset says to theNovel of the Holocaust’s escort, and she asks permissionbefore adjusting his tie and brushing the shoulders of hissuit.

“You look gorgeous,” she says, as if they’re sharing ajoke.

The man with the headset leads them down a hallwayand carefully into a bright studio, gently closing the doorbehind them. The set is smaller than the Novel of theHolocaust thought, and raised, like a float in a parade.Another guest is on under the lights, a blonde womantaller than him, dressed to show off her strong arms andgenerous chest—a movie star. He wishes he knew whoshe is.

In real life, the Novel of the Holocaust never searchedfor his parents. He did not find anyone from his village.They were dead, everyone agreed, and though he did notbelieve it for several months, he had little else to occupyhis mind, and too soon he accepted the truth. There wereno miraculous escapes, no easy miracles. There wasnothing funny or uplifting, no blackly operatic metaphors.He did not hide jewels to trade for favors or share his foodwith sickly children, and once they were liberated, he didnot want to remember any of it.

He doesn’t want to now, but at this point there’s nochoice. They’re ready for him. The blonde is finished, andthe man with the headset leads him to her chair, stillwarm from her. A sound man snakes a wire up throughthe front of his shirt, chilly against his skin, as the hostess

thanks him for being on the show. She has so muchmake-up on that her face is divided into zones of color, aliving Mondrian.

“I’m so honored to meet you. Your book is absolutelymarvelous, truly heartbreaking.”

He thanks her, nodding like a professor while thesoundman fiddles with his lapel. “Can we get a level?” avoice calls Godlike from the ceiling.

“Say something,” the soundman orders.“Hello,” the Novel of the Holocaust says. “Can you

hear me?”“That’s fine,” the ceiling replies.“Thirty seconds,” the man with the headset says.The Novel of the Holocaust’s escort stands offstage by

the door with her copy, giving him a thumbs-up.“I’m going to introduce you and the book and then I’ll

ask you a few questions,” the hostess says. “Don’t worry,it’ll be over before you know it.”

He thinks of London again, his computer waiting onthe table, the kitchen empty, the post piling up. How quietit must be, how still. Why does this seem ideal to him, thebest way to spend his days?

In real life, everyone he knew as a child died. Thesoldiers came with their boats and took everyone awayand killed them one by one, and only he survived. That is

the secret of the Novel of the Holocaust, one he has toldnobody, and never will, not now, not ever (oh, but don’tthey know?). In the Novel of the Holocaust, the people heloves live forever. For that lie, he is being made famous.

“Five, four,” the man with the headset says, andfinishes the countdown with his fingers.

“We’re back,” the hostess says, leaning toward thecamera, and introduces him, telling the country he’swritten a luminous, important book about the darkesttragedy of our time which Oprah Winfrey has just chosenfor her book club, and that he’s flown in directly fromLondon, England just to be on today’s show. She turns tohim, connects with his eyes, and he can’t help but picturehis mother, her hand on his cheek. What would shethink?

“Thank you so much for visiting with us thismorning.”

“Thank you,” the Novel of the Holocaust says. “I’mglad to be here.”

Stewart O’Nan was born and raised in Pittsburgh. His novels include SnowAngels, The Speed Queen, A Prayer for the Dying and The Night Country.

The Voices of the SnakesKarina Sumner-Smith

“Hello poison, hello grave-specter, hello nightmare,”the little green grass snake called, his tiny voice high andall his sibilants hissed. He flicked his tongue anduncurled his sleepy coils. “Hello dung heap, hellomonstrosity, hello ruin.”

It was his morning ritual, and all his greetings werefor her.

“Hello snake,” she replied through swollen,blackened lips. The others laughed, thin sounds likeleaking breath; they never failed to find her amusing.

“Up vomit, up stench,” the green snake piped happilywhen she at last began to stir, his tongue light against herear. “Up, up—we’re cold, we want to see the sun.”

“The sun, the sun,” murmured others from the vicinityof her neck. She recognized a few voices: the zigzag-patterned adder, the long black egg snake that liked tochoke her while she slept, the rattler whose warningsseemed to shiver across her scalp. There were too many,though, to tell them all apart.

She didn’t like the sun, hated the way the light burned

across her disfigured skin, making her tingle and itch. Yetthis was not what made her pause, feigning wearinessand a desire to sleep, but routine; this day was to seem asany other.

At last the viper stirred, woken by his brethrens’twisting and whispering. Rising, he said slowly, softly,“Yes, beautiful. Let us see the sun.”

He was the oldest, the largest and the cruelest, andfrom the very first day the mere sound of his voice hadmade her feel cold. Once he had tormented her, tauntedher with words far crueler than the grass snake could everutter; her ears and the line of her jaw, the curves of hershrunken breasts, still bore the scarred marks of his teethand the memory of his venom.

She had endured decades of his abuse—decadesthinking that she deserved such treatment—and thenfought back in the bloody decades that followed. He wasimmune from her great weapon, but she’d found he hadno escape from her temper, her teeth or her claws. Theyhad a truce now, their enmity tempered by centuriestogether. Beautiful, he still called her, and she allowedhim the entertainment of this tired mockery.

She rose from her tangle of animal skins and fabric,her joints creaking with the movement, and shuffledforward from the cool darkness of her cave on feet almost

too bent to bear her weight. The viper curled himselfaround her neck, his coils a loose and heavy necklacepatterned in brown.

Outside, she squinted in the morning light, thebrightness sharp in her eyes. With small and carefulsteps, she made her way down the rocky path that ledaway from her shelter, out beyond the reaching shadowsof the mountain’s bulk.

“Here, beautiful,” the viper murmured at last, and shesat before a low, flat rock, shifting her head andstretching her neck until the snakes approved of herposition. They squirmed amongst themselves, jostling intheir tight mass to each find a patch of sunlight, a bit ofwarm rock on which to bathe. Their scales were smoothagainst her face and bare shoulders, their argumentsfamiliar, their occasional bites on her ears or throatcommon enough to be ignored.

She did not hate them, the snakes, her punishmentand her guards. Not anymore. Too long spent here, shesupposed, too many years and she too weary to care; heranger had seeped away, and her pain.

Sleepily, the little grass snake stretched his body outacross her cheek, crooning in the heat. His scales weresoft and dry, sliding over her skin like warmed silk. Heclosed his poison green eyes, and murmured, “Hello

traitor, hello whore, hello desecrator.”When he was tired, she thought, resigned, he always

returned to his old favorites. She stroked the short lengthof his body with the tip of a single brass claw.

The sun passed slowly across the heavens, and shewatched the shadows shift and shorten before her. At lastshe closed her eyes, as if she too could find peace in theheat of the sun’s yellow light. It would be easier, shethought, as she’d thought countless times before, to belike the snakes: to rest and sleep and dream in contentedwarmth; to have such simple things be enough to makeher happy. Sometimes it seemed that she must have gazedupon her own heart, and now buried in her chest therewas no blood, no beating flesh and warm life, but only acold bit of chambered stone.

It was a sound that made her open a single eye: theslight scrape of leather against rock. For a moment shesaw nothing, and then there, a movement—a glimpse ofhuman skin, a glint of light from polished metal. A man;a man’s back, clothed in dirtied white. Softly, he creptnearer, careful movements in reverse.

“Hello hero,” she whispered, the words little morethan a shaped exhalation of breath. “You came.” Uponher head the snakes shifted, lost in dreams, sluggish fromthe heat, and did not wake. It was only in the depths of

her mind that her imagination conjured the grass snake’sgreeting: “Hello wing-foot, hello pretender, hello death.”

Her hero paused but did not reply. Oh, he’d heard her;she knew that much for certain. It was not the firstmorning that she’d seen him, nor the first time that they’dspoken. A moment later he resumed his stealthyapproach. Soon she could hear his ragged breathing,smell his dripping sweat. He was afraid, the arid scent ofterror surrounded him, and yet he kept walking. One step.Another.

“A moment,” she whispered, knowing that he couldread the shape of her lips in reflection, if not hear thesound of her words. And yet he came closer.

“All I ask,” she said, and now her words held an edgeas hard as stone, “is for a moment.”

He stopped, but did not reply. Fine, she thought, she’dleave him to his silence. Let him pretend that he was thehero she’d named him; that it was the shield that let himapproach rather than her permission. Let him believe thatit was his prowess that had kept him safe, this time as onhis other visits, and skill that prevented his becominganything but pile of dust and rubble, smashed at thebottom of the mountain like so many others.

She was so tired; this brief anger, too, soon bledaway.

In the stillness, she moved with care. One by one shetouched them, her snakes, with small movements of anoutstretched arm that might be taken for the twitches ofdreams. Golden scales and brown, green scales and black,white scales like clouds at dawn. The grass snake did notwake when she came to him, stroking his softly breathingside.

“Goodbye snake,” she said.Not stone, she thought, for she could feel the sudden

beating of her heart: a rush of joy and heat and pain. Thepast was gone; if she had but one regret, it was for them,her beautiful, hateful snakes.

In silence she had spoken, and so carefully she hadmoved, but it had not been enough; and slowly, as he dideverything but strike, the viper rose from his place in thesun. No, she thought, and felt exhausted.

The viper turned his wedge of a head towards the heroand his drawn sword, and yet he raised no cry. His voice,which had called out warnings for so many other would-be heroes, stayed silent; he did not tense or bare his fangs.He merely watched for a single long moment, then turnedback to stare at her face. It was only then that she thoughtto wonder if he felt as tired as she.

With but a moment’s hesitation, she touched his neckonce with the back of a single finger, the first time she

had touched him with anything but the points ofoutstretched claws. His body was warm.

Again she said, “Goodbye snake.” The viper peered ather with his dark, metallic eyes. His tongue flicked outonce, twice, and then he curled, twisting around so thathis body rested across her shoulder. With gentlenessshe’d never seen, that she’d never imagined he possessed,he lay down, his head a soft pressure in the hollow of herthroat.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. “You are forgiven.”

Karina Sumner-Smith is a twenty-something recluse, short fiction author andnovelist-in-the-making. Writing seriously since her late teens, Karina’spublication credits include stories forthcoming in anthologies Mythspring andChildren of Magic, as well as work placed in magazines such as StrangeHorizons, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Flytrap. In addition to herwriting and a new job with an IT consulting firm, Karina recently launched ajewelry design company with a friend, and so finds herself with massedquantities of beads and wire, and very little free time. She lives in Toronto.

The Sphinx and Ernest HemingwayWade Ogletree

Young male lions roam the savannah, refugees fromtheir mothers’ pride. The sphinx laps at the river’s edge ina gully thick with the scent of two wandering males,evicted by a father now wary of the competition. Leftalone, they will find another pride, separately or together,kill the elder male and his children, and claim the femalesfor their own. The sphinx ponders this as she flicks hertail like a lioness in heat. She seeks no justification forwhat she means to do, nor is she motivated bycompassion for the young who would be slaughtered. Sheloves the riddle of their behavior, and that is all.

She bounds out of the gully into brown fieldsstretched long and low to a blue horizon washed white inheat. She pauses to hear the soft pad of their paws againstthe rocks and then sprints on, for they must not see herface. The deep rasp of their breath presses close behindher as they run. The sound of it, rumbling out of theirbroad chests, excites her; and she must lengthen thedistance between them lest they hear her purr, somethinglions cannot do.

She has journeyed miles to find them; she must leadthem back as far, to wound them close to the den andteach her children to finish the job. She thinks of theirpink, cherubic faces buried deep in the blood and flesh,and she smiles.

As night approaches with amber skies, the kopje thathides her den is lit with speckled reflections of the settingsun. A scream aches in her breast, but she dares notrelease it—a cougar’s call, a woman’s scream. She hasheard that scream herself, echoed from a woman’s lips,but what the human screams in terror, she screams in joy.Tears bead and then stream back along her face and intoher hair, her deep well of emotion springing out from hereyes.

She alights atop the first rock cropping and then thesecond. She pauses, flicks her tail, and then drops gentlyinto the stone valley and waits. She looks once betweenthe stones to her den, hidden in shadow. Like shadowupon shadow, she imagines she sees faces stir in theblackness, and then light reflects like red bursts of flame,the bloody glow of the capillaries at the back of herchildren’s eyes.

She turns away from her children and leaps back atopthe kopje. She settles her belly against its cold surface andfaces the approaching lions at last. The shadows of the

evening will cloak her for a few seconds more, but soonher would-be lovers will see her smooth, pink, hairlessface, the intelligent eyes, and playful smile, and they willknow that she is more than they had expected, and morethan they can handle. In the moment before she strikes,she will let them hear her scream.

She breathes deeply, and a familiar smell tickles hernose. It is as faint as her own scent must be to theapproaching lions, for she has positioned herselfdownwind. She feels the taut pull of panic. She has beencareless and arrogant, too often the hunter, too rarely theprey. The scent is male and human. He is downwind,where he can wait unnoticed until the moment comes tostrike.

She prepares for a desperate spring to safety. Hemuscles compress and then propel her forward, but as shemoves, human thunder echoes across the plains. Thebullet pierces her hide and then expands, punching a largehole through her intestines and spleen. It enters like apinprick and exits like a volcano. The earth tumbles up tomeet her.

Pain blinds her at first, and her senses are slow to findtheir way through her confused thoughts. She smells thefear of the lions. If it were not for the sound of her ownblood pulsing through her veins, she would hear their soft

retreat. The human male will approach soon to finish her.He will not be alone. They hunt in packs, these humans.She thinks of her children.

She tries to stand, but the pain in her gut is too great.She drags herself through the grass. A few feet away, arock overhang hides another cave. She shades herself in itin summer, but it is too exposed to den her children. Sheturns so she can face her hunters and then backs inside.

Night has come to the Serengeti, and the last of theevening’s purple light fades away in blackness. Footstepsforetell the coming of men. Light flickers across the grass,and in it, she sees her own trail of blood. The light driftsaway, but she knows her hunter is not leaving. He can killat a distance. Several seconds pass, and she cringes,waiting for the kill. One of the lights falls to the ground.It rolls in the grass to within a foot of the cave, this light,like the fire within her children’s eyes, shines withoutburning. She wonders if she will hear the thunder beforeshe dies, the way her own prey would hear her scream,but neither death nor thunder comes.

A shadow falls across the mouth of the cave. Thenmore than a shadow, it is a man, staring in at her. Hisweapon, still in his hand, rests on the grass. He is broad-faced and white, with a mustache, thick and dark.

He asks, “Are you hurt?”

She wants to laugh and to cry. What kind of questionis this? She is dying. It seems foolish to admit herweakness and foolish to deny it. At last, she says only, “Iam hurt.”

In Swahili he tells the others to watch for the lion.There’s a woman here, injured. She not only understandshim, but she manages to smile. Her Swahili is better thanhis.

In English, he tells her, “We’re going to get you to adoctor.” Then he wipes his face with his hand and asks,“Was it the lion?”

She understands the words, but not the question.When she does not answer, he changes the question.

“Did I shoot you?”She stares at him, bewildered. She nods.He bows his head and closes his eyes. If she had the

strength, she could kill him now. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Idon’t know what happened. I was shooting at a lioness.There was just the one shot. She must have been right ontop of you.”

It takes a moment, but at last she understands. Hethought he was shooting a lioness, because he could onlysee her flanks. Now, he can only see her face, and hethinks she is human. Again, she manages to smile, butshe is careful to hide her teeth.

“You’re smiling,” he says. “Good. Give me yourhand. We need to get you out of there.”

“No, I will stay here.”“It’s perfectly safe. I promise.”“I will stay here.”“But you’re hurt.”“I am dying,” she says, “and I will die here.”He looks angry now. “Don’t say that.”She looks at the walls of her cave, pleased with

herself. Perhaps, there is a chance to save her children, ifthe hunter never knows what she is. “This,” she says,“will be my grave.”

“I can’t allow that.”“You have killed me. Will you deny me this, as

well?”He has no answer for this. She can see the confusion

and frustration in his eyes, and she wonders if she couldfind the strength for one last lunge. She could kill him orwound him enough for her children to finish, but he is notalone. The pack would kill her, and once they saw whatshe was, they would hunt down and kill her children.

He asks, “What would you have me do?”“Leave me to die,” she says. “Cover the entrance with

rocks and dirt. Bury me here and go.”“I won’t leave you,” he says.

“Will you bury me when I die? Bury me here, where Iam?” She sees his hesitation. She thinks quickly, paws atthe riddle of human nature, and finds her answer. “I camehere to die. Illness has consumed my flesh, left me in painand grotesque to other humans.” She catches herself.“Other people. I came here to die, unseen and forgotten.You must not pull me out. I beg you. When I die, bury mewhere I am.”

Her words connect, and he nods. “I wish I had knownyou before,” he says. “I would like to have known thiswoman who came to Africa to die.”

He asks, “What is your name?”Name. She has no name and cannot invent one now.

“I want to die unseen and unknown,” she says. “What isyours?”

“Ernest Hemingway,” he says, and he says it with theexpectation that it will mean something. It does.

“I have read you,” she says, and it is true. Sometimes,in the midst of destroying a human camp, she findsbooks. Hemingway seems to be a favorite among whitemen in Africa. She has read his short stories and novelsand a biography of sorts, A Field Guide to ErnestHemingway. She remembers it for its riddles:

Hemingway is to Hadley as Herod is to Mariamne.“Call me Mariamne.” She laughs gently at her joke,

and fresh waves of pain rip through her gut.“Mariamne,” he repeats, without catching the

allusion. “What a beautiful name.”“She was the first wife of King Herod the Great,” she

explains. “He had her murdered and then mourned her therest of his life. Will you mourn me when I’m gone?”

“I will mourn you.”“For all your life?”“For all my life.”She closes her eyes and tries to imagine its true. She

knows his relationships with women are murder—thebutchering of their memories in conversation, in letters,and in fiction. The one exception is his first wife, Hadley.He divorced her for a wealthier woman but has regrettedlosing her ever since. Hemingway is to Hadley as Herodis to Mariamne.

“You will never forget me,” she says. “That much Ibelieve.”

“How could I?”“I don’t believe you could.”He turns and gives more orders, but in English this

time. He has spent his Swahili. Soon he reaches into thecave with a canteen of water. The walls of the cave makeit awkward for him to maneuver the canteen. She drinksthe water from his hand.

“You’re dehydrated,” he says. “Your tongue is likesandpaper.”

She wonders if he noticed, too, that she pulls backwith her tongue, like a cat. He says nothing of it. Shelikes the taste of salt on his palm.

Another white man kneels at the cave’s opening. Hisleathered flesh and hard features, and the massive rifle inhis grip, mark him as the pack’s Alpha Male. “Let themen pull her out,” he says. “We have to get back tocamp.”

* * * *

One of Mariamne’s children ventures out of the den.She is a little beige cub with large, puffy, pink cheeks andstarburst hazel eyes. The muffled sound of her mother’svoice draws her, and she scampers across the earthenfloor of the rock valley and leaps for one of the walls.

The eldest of the children darts after her, catches theback of her neck in her teeth, and hurls her to the ground.She is double the size of the runt and is used tounquestioned dominance. She has never experienced themad desperation that pumps through her sister’s veins,the certainty that their mother is hurt.

The runt’s eyes see only the danger that hunts her

mother. She hits the ground on all four feet and springsupward, slashing at the throat. The eldest is hardly awareshe has been hit before her throat is gone. Inembarrassment and spite, she smashes the runt’s skullagainst the stone wall. Then they both tumble to theground. The sounds of their dying differ, one from theother, as their wounds differ. The eldest sucks in a finalreflexive breath, full of blood. The runt’s eyes roll back asseizures ripple through her body. Finally, they lie still,their bodies only inches apart.

* * * *

The hunters argue at the mouth of the cave, but at lastthe Alpha Male capitulates. Mariamne will not be moved.Her blood-choked cough ends the argument. They lookinto her eyes, and she knows what they see. Death.

The Alpha Male retreats into the darkness.Hemingway wants to hold her hand, but she will notreach out to him. He strokes her cheek instead and tellsher of his home in the Keys. He will take her there, andthey will fish off the coast of Cuba. They will go to Paris,to the Little Bar. They will see the world and take in all ithas to offer and will come again to Africa, where theywill hunt side by side.

“What about your wife?” Mariamne asks, her voice soweak, she doubts he can hear.

“You will be my wife.”His hand is still on her cheek, and it is the last good

thing she feels. She tries to imagine a life with this man,to imagine being human. She wants it, and perhaps shewants it bad enough to send him away, to tell him to buryher now, to tell him that she will be all right but bury hernow. She will be his again, tomorrow. Perhaps. Shesmiles at this, the final irony of her life, that she isSchrödinger’s cat, Stockton’s Lady or the Tiger. But shewill not tell him to go. He will be there when she dies. Hewill not come back for her.

“If I should find you again, after I die, will we still dothese things?”

Her eyes are closed now, so she cannot see the lookon his face as he hesitates with his answer. At last, hesays, “Again and again and again.”

She is silent, and he is silent. Her awareness of himcomes and goes, and when it comes, she wants to crawlout to him. She lacks now the cunning to stay hidden. Shealso lacks the strength to emerge. Only once does shereveal herself to him, when she asks, “What should I befor you? A woman or a lion? How would you love mebest?”

She cannot hear if he answers her. He still cups hercheek in his palm, and she wants to taste the salt of hissweat. She wants to flick her tail and rub the scent of herhindquarters against him, to stir the animal in him andhave him as her mate. In the final throes of delirium, thewall between want and have are shattered, and shebelieves they are together, frolicking in the dry savannahgrass. With one last burst of strength she screams.

He hears a scream of terror, but it is not terror shefeels. Her last act before dying is this scream of joy.

* * * *

Mary regrets her decision to stay behind. The huntwent long. The sun set, and when the men returned, theirarrival failed to lighten the gloom. Instead, they seem todraw it in around them, like a mourner’s veil. They haveno right. The veil is hers.

She sits for dinner beside Hemingway. Through eachof the courses, he broods, and she can feel that somethinghas happened that no one will talk about. She is temptedto believe that he, like his fictional Macomber, has provenhimself a coward, but she knows it is not so simple.

Earlier, he had been hungry for a kill, but theSerengeti refused him. The photographer from Look

demanded the worst of him, and photographed himclaiming another man’s kill, a leopard. He saved whatdignity he could, insisting it not be published until he hadkilled a leopard of his own.

Then, while she had been away, Christmas shoppingin Narobi, he had shaved his head, dressed in native garb,and hunted down his reluctant leopard with a spear; aspear and six shotgun blasts. He celebrated the victorywithout her. He continues now to see one of the womenfrom that night. If she is supposed to ignore or condone it,she can do neither.

They eat in silence, and no photographs are taken. Hewill not write about this night for the magazine. It, like somany nights, does not fit the romance of his image, theromance of the hunter and the kill. She looks forsomething to say, but tonight, between the two of them,there is nothing to be said.

She wants to be wanted the way he wanted theleopard. She wants to be chased and overcome and to bethe victory celebration that lasts all night and breaks thecot. Yes, she knows her cot has been replaced, and sheknows what broke it. She wants him to herself in a wayshe has never known. Before her there was Martha,Pauline, and Hadley, and others besides. There have beenothers since. Perhaps, there will be others after, when she

is another Martha, Pauline, or Hadley.When she found Hemingway, she thought she was

saving him from Martha, a woman who had grown todespise him. She wonders if, instead, she saved Marthafrom Hemingway and there are good reasons he should bedespised.

She sleeps on her new cot and tries not to dreamabout what broke the old one. It brings to her lips thetaste for the kill. She has told Hemingway she wants toshoot a lion of her own. It is, she supposes, a half-truth.In her dreams she is Margot, and he is Macomber.

* * * *

Dawn stretches across the savannah and dips itsfinger into the rock valley where lay the bodies ofMariamne’s cubs. They lay at the bottom of this cup ofshadow slowly sipped by the morning’s light, and theretheir bodies writhe. Flesh boils and squirms, and theirchests expand with great gasps of air.

One emerges from death as a human child, and,possessing the fearful memory of her mother’s need, shescrambles back to the rock wall but now lacks thestrength and claws to scale it. The other emerges as a lioncub, and, possessing an instinct and a nature that

overcomes and undermines her old memories and self,she pounces on the child. Then, proud and ready to feed,she drags the carcass toward the den.

Deep, throaty growls warn her off. The den is full ofnow-strangers, and the lion cub drops her prize andclambers out of the rock valley. The sphinx cubs drag thecarcass back inside and begin to feed.

* * * *

In Mariamne’s grave, her body, too, begins to writhe.Flesh boils and squirms, and her chest expands with greatgasps of air. She is Schrödinger’s cat. She is both lionand woman and the uncertainty between two states, untilHemmingway comes to unearth her grave. He has notslept and comes now, alone or thinking he is alone, tounbury her. He must see her one last time. She isStockton’s Lady or The Tiger, waiting for him with eitherlove or death, and maybe neither choice is so differentthan the other, for Mary follows after him with the AlphaMale’s gun.

With the last of the rock and soil dug free,Hemingway steps back, pushed away by the stench, astench as strong as death, but it is not death he smells. Hedrops to one knee, several yards from the mouth of the

cave, and peers inside.Mary appears to his right, the great mass of the rifle

weighing down her arms as she aims. He is still lookingat her when Mariamne charges out of the cave andthunder explodes across the grasslands. The body drops tothe ground and slides three feet across the dew.

Hemingway jumps to his feet, looks at the body, andlooks at Mary. Mary smiles; it is a smile that says hershot was more than perfect. It has castrated withouttouching, without wounding, by simply killing that whichhe most desired. She wanted a kill of her own, and shehas found it. She will not ignore. She will not condone.

Hemingway stays after Mary has left. The cave isempty. Mariamne’s perfect body lies sprawled in thegrass. The morning sun rises higher in the east and willsoon choke the savannah with its heat.

The title of “The Sphinx and Ernest Hemingway” is its own summary, but wecan add that the story is less about the Sphinx than it is about Hemingway,the image he embodied, and, ultimately, how that impacted the women heloved. The author, Wade Ogletree, lives in Fairhope, Alabama, where he is areal estate agent with Coldwell Banker, JME Realty and an associate pastorwith the local Calvary Chapel. He runs the fiction critique siteBetterFiction.com and has been published in a handful of online magazines.Look for an upcoming interview with Wade at TheSwordReview.com.

Madonna LittoralisCaitlín R. Kiernan

Like the hooves of Neptune’s horses or only thewaves breaking themselves upon the shore, my thoughtshave broken apart again, shattered white foam spray onsharp granite boulders, and I’m staring at the tub or I’mstaring at you stretched out naked upon my bed or I’mstaring into that other darkness huddled beneath therocks. That darkness filled up with the semen reek ofseaweed and stranded things, with the sound of drippingwater and lapping water and someone whispering half toherself, and I do not know if I’m meant to listen or to turnaway. I always turn away, in time, when push comes toshove, but for now I listen, and the bathroom light off theold tub glints too brightly incandescent from cast ironenameled white and rusted claw feet on ceramic tiles thecolor of a broken promise. I listen, and you pause, smilethat smile that will never stop frightening me, and thencontinue again.

“Jenny Haniver,” you say. And I ask Who? What wasthat? and so you whisper the name again—“JennyHaniver.”

The cold Massachusetts night, night below thelighthouse and the sand and the rocks, in that hollow thesea has worried deep into the edge of the world, and I amcrouched at the entrance, because I haven’t yet found thecourage to crawl inside. That would be suicide, just likethe white bathtub, and you roll over onto your back andsmile for me.

“Oh, it’s a pathetic, shriveled thing,” you say. “Anape above, a mackerel below. You know the sort. Even P.T. Barnum had his Fiji mermaid.”

I squint into the stinking sea-cave darkness, seeingnothing at all and thinking that I really should havebrought a kerosene lantern or a flashlight. Knowing that Inever have and likely never will. It’s not permitted; therewill be light, of a sort, farther along.

“The Fiji mermaid,” you say again, repeating yourselfbecause I must be hard of hearing. “Exhibited throughoutNorth America and the Continent in 1840, ‘41, and ‘42,to the wonder and astonishment of thousands ofnaturalists and other scientific and scholarly persons,whose previous doubts as to the existence of such anastonishing creation were entirely removed.”

“Now you sound like a carnival barker,” I say, andthere’s that smile again.

“Step right up” you say. “Just two bits, my lady, and

I’ll show you everything there is to see.” And you spreadyour legs wide, and for a long, disquieting moment I canseem to find no difference between the sea cave and yourexposed sex. I cannot, for that moment, place myself intime or space, and it might be night on Cape Anne or onlyanother night in my room. My dislocation passes, slowly,and the lamp light casts your restless shadow on thewalls.

“Something I haven’t seen before?” I ask, and yourlaughter is an undertow dragging me down and down anddown, silver bubbles leaking from my lips and racingtowards the drowning sky. You draw your knees togetheronce again, hiding the passage below the lighthouse,hiding my dreams, and roll over so your back’s to me.

“You don’t ask much, do you?” and I don’t want toanswer, but I do. I always answer. Then I want to know ifit was really from Fiji, the Fiji mermaid.

“Who knows. Barnum leased the thing from a mannamed Moses Kimball for twelve dollars and fifty cents aweek.”

I look over my shoulder, because there’s unexpectedmusic from the hallway; I turn towards the open bedroomdoor and stare out the entrance of the cave at the waningmoon laying molten silver across the Atlantic. I know thatthe two of you—you and her—are coconspirators, secret

accomplices, comrades in my undoing. Wicked, wickedthings, my loves, my licentious saints of tide and beachedwhales and dry, salt-stained kisses.

“Stop stalling,” you say. “Come to bed. I’m so cold,”and I turn back and stare at your shoulders and keep myseat. The moon is one night past full now, a pocked andshining coin tacked up somewhere beyond the windowpane.

And sang in a voice so hoarse,My comrades and my messmates,“Oh, do not weep for me,For I’m married to a mermaid,At the bottom of the deep blue sea.”

I have been down here so many times that I’ve longago lost count. Awake and dreaming, I’ve traced thewinding path between the low dunes and through therocks, past the winking, whitewashed tower of theAnnisquam lighthouse. When the tide is out, I can alwaysreach the cave, and she is almost always there, the ladyand her court, the maiden empress of urchins andstingrays. If I were a sane woman, I’d go home to Bostonand forget what I’ve seen and done. But if I were merelysane, I would never have found this place.

I wonder how many have died here, how many havelost their way or lingered too long, hypnotized by the sirensongs, by her hurricane voice and the booming voice ofthe ocean echoing off the high granite walls, and thenfound themselves trapped when the moon dragged thewaves back in again. I’ve seen their bones, crusty andsharp with tiny barnacles, green with algae. I’ve seenskulls that have become cradles for anemones andscuttling crabs. Before it’s done, I’ll take my place amongthem. I know this because she’s told me so again andagain. There was a time when that knowledge frightenedme. There was a time when I still valued my life morethan the sight of her.

I wonder what it will take to get the tub clean.“I’m getting bored,” you say and sigh and roll over

onto your back again. “Are you going to sit there all nightor are you going to fuck me?”

He said that as he went down,Great fishes he did see;They seemed to think as he did wink,That he was rather free.

“Soon the stitches will have to come out,” you say andlaugh, and I’m not imagining that you’re laughing at me.

“People believed in it, the Fiji mermaid?” I ask.“People believe what pleases them most. People see

what they want to believe. Show them a baby orangutansewn to a fish’s tail, a little papier mâché, and they’ll seewhat they want to see.”

I close my eyes, shutting out the cold light through thewindow, and what was that name you used? JennyHaniver, Jenny Hanvers, Antwerp Anvers, jeune deAntwerp . . .

She came at once unto him,And gave him her white hand,Saying, “I have waited long, my dear,To welcome you to land.Go to your ship and tell them,You’ll leave them all for me . . .”

I don’t remember standing and walking to the bed. Ican’t recall standing over you or taking off my dress andmy stockings and my boots. Your eyes are black andbottomless, and your teeth are razor shards of alabasterset in purple gums.

. . . For you’re married to a mermaid,At the bottom of the deep blue sea.

“Yes, that’s my girl,” you murmur, and your breath isno different from the air imprisoned beneath thelighthouse, sea-damp exhalations from the crystalline lipsof the cave. “My father was a taxidermist,” you whisperplayfully in my ear. “My mother was a shark got caughton his line. They made me from love and needles, fromfish heads and silken thread.”

“Maybe they should have thrown you back,” I say,and my fingertips brush quickly across your glisteningthighs, then loiter a moment on your pale belly. I touchthe smooth place where your navel should be.

“Maybe they did,” you reply.I am very near the heart of the cave now, moving past

twin columns carved and shaped by the constantattentions of the sea, the perfect lancet archway fashionedby nameless architects, its keystone marked by the idiotcountenance of some dim, abyssal god. And here is thepool, glowing phosphorescent with the false light ofjellyfish and tiny squids, the yellow-green glow of ahundred thousand coelenterate tendrils washed up hereand clinging to the rocks. She’s floating facedown in theshallow water just a little ways out from the pool’snearest edge, her long hair spread wide for a stranglinghalo, the fins along her spine sagging limp and tattered,and a more careless or indifferent eye might easily

mistake her for a dead thing.I look away from the tub. There are spatters and

bloody smears on the floor at my feet, already drying to acrust. There’s more blood waiting in the sink, clinging tothe scalpels and Metzenbaum scissors I dropped therewhen she finally stopped breathing, the retractors andstainless steel hooks and hemostatic forceps. Blood in thetub and on the floor, in the sink and on my hands. Somuch cleaning to be done, though I’m so tired that I onlywant to close my eyes and pray that she’ll have given mydreams back to me. Certainly, she has no use for themnow, for the sea is ever dreaming, that ever slumbering,sunless kingdom of nightmares which lies so manythousands of leagues down, balanced always on thebright edge of waking.

“Did you actually write that?” you ask me, and I nodyes. You shake your head and frown; your lower lip looksswollen. “Well, it’s wretched,” you tell me. “No wonderno one will publish your silly book. Is that really the bestthat you can do?”

Later, I’ll admit there’s much more blood than I’dexpected. Later, I’ll say something like, “You’d havethought that I’d used a hacksaw and an axe.” I reach for aclean towel to wipe some of it away.

And you impatiently guide my left hand to the cleft

between your legs, the skin shaved smooth, and the oceaninside you is beginning to leak out. It moistens my roughfingertips with a few sticky drops of brine, and you’re stilltalking, describing again for me exactly how it should bedone.

“You would tightly bind my legs before making thefirst incision,” you whisper, as if someone else mightoverhear. “You would press the blade here and draw itslowly down.”

I’m in the cave beneath the lighthouse, and outside,the ocean roars and rages as I wade into the glowing pool.The water is cold enough to steal my breath, and I pause,gasping as it washes about legs and quickly soaksthrough my woolen trousers. At that moment, I canalmost believe it is a conscious thing, that chill, and thatit means to drive me shivering back out onto the rocks.The jealous souls of all those who have come before me tokeep her safe and keep her distant and keep her tothemselves.

“If I cry out, you would ignore me and keep cutting. Itwouldn’t be anything but cowardice, anyway.”

I grit my teeth against the gnawing guardian cold andthe pain that comes before merciful numbness and takeanother step towards her. The bottom of the pool is slickand uneven, and I almost lose my footing, splashing

about like a clumsy child, and now the water has risen ashigh as my waist. If I drown, if I slip again andhypothermia takes me before the water rushes up mynostrils and down my throat and fills my lungs, then I cantake my proper place with all the others whom she’scalled out from warm beds and the listing decks of sailingships.

“If I should scream, you’ll cut that much deeper,” youwhisper urgently, commanding me, and then you thrustyour hips against me. And I hold my breath, wanting anddreading what comes next, the part you keep hiddendecently inside, the secrets you say you show no one butme.

My father was a taxidermist. My mother was a sharkgot caught on his line.

I try hard not to look into the tub. There’s nothingthere I ever want to see again, nothing I haven’t seenbefore. It’s only dead flesh, cut away and discarded andunloved.

In the pool, she slaps once at the surface with herbroad tail, and the freezing spray peppers my face. Shedrifts a moment longer, then turns her head and looks atme. Her eyes are something more than empty. Her eyesare the moment before the universe winked on. Her eyesare void and absence and the first twelve seconds after

death.“Don’t you dare fucking pussy out on me,” you hiss,

digging your sharp nails into my back. And when youenter me, I bite my lip to keep from screaming, bite downhard enough that I taste blood. I’ve never yet seen thathidden part of you; you’ve told me that you’ll kill me if Iever look, and I believe you. It slides deep inside, foldingme open, a bristling, stinging fist or fingers sproutingbarracuda teeth or a gouging scrimshaw tongue. And nowyou shut your eyes, your neck bent sharply back so that Ican see the old scars on your throat, three ragged pinkslits on either side.

They made me from love and needles . . .And I’m alone again, curled up in a sandy place near

the mouth of the sea cave, though I have never been ableto recall how it was that I escaped the pool—if I wasfound wanting, lacking, and driven away, or if I was onlytoo afraid to reach out and take her hand. The moon isbright and bitter above the thundering breakers, nowarmth at all from her light as I lie among the weatheredstones like Andromeda waiting for the slithering, snake-jawed agent of Poseidon to finally be done with her. I’llfind my way back home before dawn, past the oldlighthouse and the marshy banks of the AnnisquamRiver.

You wrap your legs around me. You encircle me.“Sew them closed,” you murmur, and a single drop of

sweat rolls off my chin and lands on your right breast.“Sew them closed forever,” and in that room with its lion-footed tub, I make another careless vow and reach for theleather satchel near the door.

Caitlin Kiernan has published six novels, including Silk, Threshold, LowRed Moon, and Murder of Angels, and her short fiction has been collected inTales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores, Wrong Things(with Poppy Z. Brite), To Charles Fort, With Love, and Alabaster, and hasbeen selected for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth bookof Best New Horror, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Her seventhnovel, Daughter of Hounds, will be released in 2007. She lives in Atlanta.

About “Madonna Littoralis”: “I’m endlessly fascinated by mermaids, partlybecause I’m endlessly fascinated by transformation and those things whichhuman beings perceive as bridging one state of being and another, by theillusion that there are, indeed, static states of being to bridge by transitionsand transformations. More than anything, “Madonna Littoralis” is aboutdenying the immutability of form and affirming the fluidity of existence.”

It’s Against the Law to Feed theDucks

Paul G. Tremblay

Saturday

Ninety plus degrees, hours of relentless getawaytraffic on the interstate, then the bumps and curves ofrural route 25 as late afternoon melts into early evening,and it’s the fourth time Danny asks the question.

“Daddy, are you lost again?”Tom says, “I know where we’re going, buddy. Trust

me. We’re almost there.”Dotted lines and bleached pavement give way to a dirt

path that roughly invades the woods. Danny watches hisinfant sister Beth sleep, all tucked into herself andlooking like a new punctuation mark. Danny strainsagainst his twisted shoulder harness. He needs to go peebut he holds it, remembering how Daddy didn’t say anymad words but sighed and breathed all heavy the lasttime he asked to stop for a pee break.

Danny says, “Mommy, pretend you didn’t know I wasgoing to be five in September.”

Ellen holds a finger to her chin and looks at the car’sceiling for answers. “Are you going to be ten years oldtomorrow?”

“No. I will be five in September.”“Oh, wow. I didn’t know that, honey.”Tom and Ellen slip into a quick and just-the-facts

discussion about what to do for dinner and whether or notthey think Beth will sleep through the night. Danny learnsmore about his parents through these conversations, theones they don’t think he’s listening to.

It’s dark enough for headlights. Danny counts theblue bug-zappers as their car chugs along the dirt road.He gets to four.

“Daddy, what kind of animals live in these woods?”“The usual. Raccoons, squirrels, birds.”“No, tell me dangerous animals.”“Coyotes, maybe bears.”Their car somehow finds the rented cottage and its

gravel driveway between two rows of giant trees. Bethwakes screaming. Danny stays in the car while hisparents unpack. He’s afraid of the bears. They don’tcelebrate getting to the cottage like they were supposedto.

Sunday

They need a piece of magic yellow paper to go to LakeWinnipesauke. Danny likes to say the name of the lakeinside his head. The beach is only a mile from theircottage and when they get there Danny puts the magicpaper on the dashboard. He hopes the sun doesn’t melt itor turn it funny colors.

Danny runs ahead. He’s all arms and legs, amarionette with tangled strings, just like Daddy. Heclaims a shady spot beneath a tree. He doesn’t know whatkind of tree. Ellen and Beth come next. Beth can only say‘Daddy’ and likes to give head butts. Tom is last, carryingthe towels and shovels and pails and squirt-guns andfood. Danny watches his parents set everything up. Theyknow how to unfold things and they know whereeverything goes without having to ask questions, withouthaving to talk to each other.

Danny likes that his parents look younger thaneverybody else’s parents, even if they are old. Danny is around face and big rubber ball cheeks, just like Mommy.Ellen has a tee shirt and shorts pulled over her bathingsuit. She won’t take them off, even when she goes into thewater. She says, “You need sun screen before you goanywhere, little boy.”

Danny closes his eyes as she rubs it all in andeverywhere. He’s had to wear it all summer long but he

doesn’t understand what sun screen really means. Sunscreen sounds like something that should be built ontotheir little vacation cottage.

* * * *

Danny is disappointed with the magic beach becausethere are too many other people using it. They all get inhis way when he runs on the sand, pretending to be SpeedBoy. And the older kids are scary in the water. Theythrash around like sharks.

Lunch time. Danny sits at the picnic table next to theirtree, eating and looking out over Winnipesauke. TheWhite Mountains surround the bowl of the lake and in thelake there are swimmers, boats, buoys, and a raft. Dannywants to go with Daddy to the raft, but only when thescary older kids are gone. Danny says Winnipesauke, thatmagical word, into his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.It tastes good.

A family of ducks comes out of the water. They mustbe afraid of the older kids too. They walk underneath hispicnic table.

Ellen says, “Ducks!” picks up Beth, and points her atthe ducks. Beth’s bucket hat is over her eyes.

Tom sits down next to Danny and throws a few scraps

of bread on the sand. Danny does the same, taking piecesfrom his sandwich, mostly crust, but not chunks with a lotof peanut butter, he eats those. The ducks get mostly jellychunks, and they swallow everything.

Tom stops throwing bread and says, “Whoops. Sorry,pal. It’s against the law to feed the ducks.”

He doesn’t know if Daddy is joking. Danny likes tolaugh at his jokes. Jokes are powerful magic wordsbecause they make you laugh. But when he’s not sure ifit’s a joke or not, Danny thinks life is too full of magicwords.

He laughs a little and says, “Good one, Daddy.”Danny is pleased with his answer, even if it’s wrong.

“No really, it says so on that sign.” Tom points to awhite sign with red letters nailed into their tree. Dannycan’t read yet. He knows his letters but not how they fittogether.

Ellen says, “That’s weird. A State law against feedingthe ducks?”

Danny knows it’s not a joke. It is a law. The word lawis scary, like the older kids in the water.

Danny says, “Mommy, pretend you didn’t know itwas against the law to feed the ducks.”

“Okay. So, I can just go order a pizza and somehotdogs for the ducks, right?”

“No. You can’t feed the ducks. It’s against the law.”Danny eats the rest of his sandwich, swinging his feet

beneath the picnic table bench. The scary older kids comeout of the water and chase the ducks, even the babies.Danny wants to know why it’s not against the law tochase the ducks, but he doesn’t ask.

* * * *

Their cottage has two bedrooms, but they sleep in thesame bedroom because of the bears. Danny sleeps in thetallest bed. There’s a ceiling fan above him and afterDaddy tells a story about Spider-man and dinosaurs, hehas to duck to keep from getting a hair cut. That’sDanny’s joke.

Beth is asleep in her playpen. Everyone has to bequiet because of her.

Danny is tired after a full day at the beach. Hisfavorite part was holding onto Daddy’s neck while theyswam out to the raft.

Danny wakes up when his parents creep into thebedroom. He is happy they are keeping their promise. Hefalls back to sleep listening to them fill up the small bedby the door. He knows his parents would rather sleep inthe other bedroom by themselves, but he doesn’t know

why.

* * * *

Danny wakes again. It’s that middle-of-the-night timehis parents always talk about. He hears noises, but getsthe sense he’s waking at the end of the noises. The noisesare outside the cottage, echoing in the mountains. Hehears thunder and lightning or a plane or a bunch ofplanes or a bunch of thunder and lightning and he is stillconvinced you can hear both thunder and lightning or hehears a bear’s roar or a bunch of bears’ roars or he hearsthe cottage’s toilet, which has the world’s loudest super-flush according to Daddy or he hears a bomb or a bunchof bombs, bombs are something he has only seen andheard in Spider-Man cartoons. Whatever the noises are,they are very far away and he has no magic words thatwill send his ears out that far. Danny falls back to sleepeven though he doesn’t want to.

Monday

The beach lot is only half full. Ellen says, “Where iseverybody?”

Tom says, “I don’t know. Mondays are kind of funnydays. Right, pal?”

Danny nods and clutches the magic yellow paper anddoesn’t care where everybody is because maybe thismeans Daddy and him can spend more time out on theraft.

They get the same spot they had yesterday, next to thetree with its against-the-law sign. They dump their stuffand boldly spread it out. Beth and Ellen sit at the shore.Beth tries to eat sand and knocks her head into Ellen’s.Tom sits in the shade and reads a book. Danny takesadvantage of the increased running room on the beachand turns into Speed Boy.

By lunch, the beach population thins. No more youngfamilies around. There are some really old people withtree-bark skin and a few older kids around, but they areless scary because they look like they don’t know what todo. The lake is empty of boats and jet-skis. The ducks arestill there, swimming and safe from renegade feeders.

Tom swims to the raft with Danny’s arms wrappedtight around his neck. Somewhere in the middle of thelake, Tom says, “Stop kicking me!” Danny knows not tosay I was trying to help you swim. Danny climbs up theraft ladder first, runs to the middle then slips, feetshooting out from beneath him, and he falls on a mat thatfeels like moss. Tom yells. Don’t run, be careful, watchwhat you’re doing. Danny doesn’t hear the words, only

what’s in his voice. They sit on the raft’s edge, danglingtheir legs and feet into the water. Daddy’s long legs godeeper.

Tom takes a breath, the one that signals the end ofsomething, and says, “It is kind of strange that hardlyanybody is here.” He pats Danny’s head, so everything isokay.

Danny nods. Commiserating, supporting, happy andgrateful to be back in Daddy’s good graces. He’s also inhis head, making up a face and body for a stranger named‘Hardly Anybody.’ He can’t decide if he should makeHardly Anybody magical or not.

They wave at Mommy and Beth at the shore. Ellen’swave is tired, like a sleeping bird. Ellen wears the sameshirt and shorts over her bathing suit. Danny wondershow long it takes for his wave to make it across the water.

They leave the beach early. On the short drive back,Tom makes up a silly song that rhymes mountain peakswith butt-cheeks and it’s these Daddy-moments thatmake Danny love him so hard he’s afraid he’ll breaksomething.

Back at the cottage. Beth is asleep and Ellen dumpsher in the playpen. Danny sits at the kitchen table andeats grapes because he was told to. Tom goes into theliving room and turns on the TV. Danny listens to the

voices but doesn’t hear what they say. But he hears Tomsay a bad word, real quick, like he is surprised.

“Ellen?” Tom jogs into the kitchen. “Where’sMommy?” He doesn’t wait for Danny’s answer. Ellencomes out of the bathroom holding her mostly dry bathingsuit and wearing a different set of tee shirt and shorts.Tom grabs her arm, whispers something, then pulls herinto the living room, to the TV.

“Hey, where did everybody go?” Danny says it like ajoke, but there’s no punch line coming. He leaves hisgrapes, which he didn’t want to eat anyway, and tip-toesinto the living room.

His parents are huddled close to the TV, too close. IfDanny was ever that close they’d tell him to move back.They’re both on their knees, Ellen with a hand over hermouth, holding something in, or maybe keepingsomething out. The TV volume is low and letters andwords scroll by on the top and bottom of the screen and inthe middle there’s a man in a tie and he is talking. Helooks serious. That’s all Danny sees before Tom sees him.

“Come with me, bud.”Daddy picks him up and plops him down in a small

sunroom at the front of the cottage.Tom says, “Mommy and Daddy need to watch a

grown-up show for a little while.”

“So I can’t see it?”“Right.”“How come?”Tom is crouched low, face to face with Danny. Danny

stares at the scraggly hairs of his mustache and beard.“Because I said it’s only for grown-ups.”

“Is it about feeding the ducks? Is it scary?”Daddy doesn’t answer that. “We’ll come get you in a

few minutes. Okay, bud?” He stands, walks out, andstarts to close sliding glass doors.

“Wait! Let me say something to Mommy first.”Tom gives that sigh of his, loud enough for Ellen to

give him that look of hers. They always share like this.Danny stays in the sunroom, pokes his head between theglass doors. Ellen is to his left, sitting in front of the TV,same position, same hand over her mouth. “Mommy,pretend you didn’t know that I could see through thesedoors.”

Mommy works to put her eyes on her son. “So, youwon’t be able to see anything in here when we shut thedoors?”

“No, I can see through them.”

Tuesday

It’s raining. They don’t go to the beach. Danny is inthe sunroom watching Beth. His parents are in the livingroom watching more grown-up TV. Beth pulls onDanny’s shirt and tries to walk, but she falls next to thecouch and cries. Ellen comes in, picks up Beth, and sitsdown next to Danny.

He says, “This is boring.”“I know, sweetie. Maybe we’ll go out soon.”Danny looks out the front windows and watches the

rain fall on the front lawn and the dirt road. Beth crawlsaway from Ellen and toward the glass doors. She bangson the glass with meaty little hands.

Danny says, “Mommy, pretend you didn’t know wewere in a spaceship.”

There’s a pause. Beth bangs her head on the glass.Ellen says, “So, we’re all just sitting here in a cottageroom, right?”

“No. This is a spaceship with glass doors.”Beth bangs on the glass harder and yells in rhythm.Ellen says, “If we’re in a ship, what about Daddy?”“We’ll come back for him later.”“Good idea.”

* * * *

Ellen and Beth stay at the cottage. Tom and Dannyare in the car but they don’t listen to the radio and Daddyisn’t singing silly songs. Danny holds the magic yellowpaper even though he knows they’re going to thesupermarket, not the beach.

They have to travel to the center of Moultonborough.Another long and obviously magical word that he’ll sayinside his head. There isn’t much traffic. Thesupermarket’s super-lot has more carts than cars.

Inside, the music is boring and has no words. Dannyhangs off the side of their cart like a fireman. He wavesand salutes to other shoppers as they wind their wayaround the stacks, but nobody waves back. Nobody looksat each other over their overflowing carts.

The line isn’t long even though there are only threeregisters open. Tom tries to pay with a credit card. Dannyis proud he knows what a credit card is.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the system is down. No creditcards. Cash or check.” The girl working the register isyoung, but like the older kids. She has dark circles underher eyes.

Danny points and says, “Excuse me, you should go tobed early tonight.”

Tom has a green piece of paper and is writingsomething down on it. He gives it to the register girl.

She says, “I’ll try,” and offers a smile. A smile thatisn’t happy.

In the parking lot, Danny says, “Go fast.”Tom says, “Hey, Danny.”Danny’s whole body tenses up. He doesn’t know

what he did wrong. “What?”“I love you. You know that, right?”Danny swings on those marionette arms and looks

everywhere at once. “Yeah.”Then Tom smiles and obeys and runs with the full

cart. Danny melts and laughs, stretching out and throwinghis head back, closing his eyes in the brightening haze.There are no other cars between the cart and their car.

Wednesday

They spend the day in the cottage. More sunroom.More grown-up TV. When Tom and Ellen finally shut offthe TV they talk about going out just to go out somewhereanywhere but the TV room and sunroom and maybe findan early dinner. Danny says, “Moultonborough.” Theytalk about how much gas is in the car. Danny says,“Winnipesauke.” They try to use their cell phones but thelittle LCD screens say no service. Danny says, “Pretendyou didn’t know I say magic words.” They talk about

how much cash they have. Everybody in the car. Tomtells Danny it’s his job to keep Beth awake. There are noother vehicles on the dirt road and more than half of thecottages they pass are dark. Beth is falling asleep soDanny sings loud silly songs and pokes her chin andcheeks. They pass empty gravel driveways and the bluebug-zappers aren’t on. Beth cries. Danny is trying not tothink about the bears in the woods. Ellen asks Danny tostop touching his sister’s face and then says it’s okay ifBeth falls asleep. They don’t have to look left or rightwhen pulling out of the dirt road. Danny still works at thekeep-Beth-awake job Daddy gave him and there’ssomething inside him that wants to hear her cry and hetouches her face again. They’re into the center ofMoultonborough and there’s less traffic than there wasyesterday. Beth cries and Ellen is stern but not yelling shenever yells telling Danny to stop touching Beth’s face.Maybe the bears are why there aren’t as many peoplearound. Beth is asleep. There’s a smattering of parkedcars in the downtown area but they don’t look parked theylook empty. Danny gently pats Beth’s foot and seesDaddy watching him in the rear view mirror. The antiquestores gift shops and hamburger huts are dark and havered signs on their doors and red always means eitherstopped or closed or something bad. Tom yells did you

hear your mother keep your hands off your sister! Theypass a row of empty family restaurants. Ellen says Tomlike his name is sharp like it hurts and she says I onlyasked him to stop touching her face I don’t want him tobe freaked out by his sister he’s being nice now why areyou yelling when he was just doing what you asked himto do you have to be consistent with him and she is sternand she is not yelling. They pull into a lot that has onetruck another empty restaurant this one with a moose onthe roof and they stop. Then Tom is loud again this timewith some hard alrights and then I hear you I get it okay Iheard you the first time. Tom gets out of the car and slamsthe door and an older man with white hair that couldmean he’s magic and a white apron walks out therestaurant’s front door. Danny waves. The older manwaves them inside. Ellen gets out of the car and whispersbut it’s not a soft whisper not at all it’s through teeth andit has teeth she says don’t you dare yell at me in front ofthe kids. Beth wakes up and points and chews on herrabbit. They go inside. The older man says they are luckyhe was just cooking up the last of his non-frozen food soit wouldn’t go to waste and it was on the house. Dannythinks about the moose on the house. They walk by thebar and there’s a woman sitting on a stool staring up at abig screen TV. Tom asks if they could shut that off

because of the kids. The old man nods and uses a bigremote control. Danny doesn’t see anything again. Theold man serves some BBQ chicken and ribs and fries andthen leaves them alone. The lights are on and nobody saysanything important in the empty restaurant.

* * * *

On the way back to the cottage they see a lonelymansion built into the side of a mountain. Lookingdollhouse-sized, its white walls and red roof surroundedby the green trees stands out like a star even in thetwilight.

Danny says, “What is that?”Tom says, “That’s called the Castle in the Clouds.”“Can we go see it?”“Maybe. Maybe we’ll even go and live there. Would

you like that?”Danny says, “Yes,” but he then he thinks the Castle is

too alone, cloaked in a mountain forest, but too open,anyone can see it from this road. He doesn’t know what’sworse, being alone alone or a watched alone. Dannydoesn’t change his answer.

* * * *

It’s past Danny’s bedtime but his parents aren’t readyto put him to bed.

Ellen is on the couch reading a magazine that has atall, blonde, skinny woman on the cover. Tom sits in frontof the TV, flipping channels. There’s nothing but static.The TV is like their cell phones now.

Tom says, “Well, at least they’ve stopped showingcommercials for the War of the Worlds remake.”

Danny wants to laugh because he knows it’s whatDaddy wants. But he doesn’t because Mommy isn’t.Danny has a good idea what ‘war’ means even though noone has ever explained it to him. Tom shuts off the TV.

There are pictures of other people all over the cottage.Now that Danny is allowed back in the TV room, he’slooking at each one. Strangers with familiar smiles andbeach poses. He looks at the frames too. They havedesigns and letters and words. Maybe magic words.Danny picks up one picture of a little girl and boyhugging and sitting on a big rock. He doesn’t care aboutthose kids. He wants to know what all the letters etchedonto the wooden frame say. Those letters wrap all the wayaround the photo.

“Read this please, Daddy.”“’Children are the magic dreamers that we all once

were.”

“Mommy, pretend you didn’t know I was a magicdreamer.”

“So, you dream about boring, non-magical stuff,right?”

“No. I’m a magic dreamer. Are you a magicdreamer?”

* * * *

Ellen sleeps with Beth in the small bed next to thebedroom door, Danny sleeps in his Princess-and-the-Peatall bed. Tom sleeps in the other bedroom. Alone alone.

Thursday

A perfect summer day. The corner Gas ‘N Save isopen. The pumps still work. Tom fills up the car’s tankand five red, two-gallon containers he took from insidethe market. Danny is inside, running around the stacks.No one tells him to stop. He climbs onto an empty shelfnext to some bread, though there isn’t much bread left,and he lies down, breathing heavy from all the running.

Tom makes multiple trips from the market to the car.On the last trip, he plucks Danny off the shelf. He says,“Hmm, this melon doesn’t look too ripe.” Danny gigglesand squirms in Daddy’s arms. “But I’ll take it anyway.”

The older woman behind the counter is smoking acigarette and has a face with extra skin. She looks like thegirl from the supermarket but one-thousand years older.Tom extends a fistful of money and asks, “Is thisenough?”

She says, “Yes,” without counting it. Danny thinksshe is lying and that she just wants them gone likeeveryone else.

Tom buckles Danny into his seat. Danny says, “Whatwould you do if you were a giant?”

“A giant? Well, I’d use a mountain as my pillow andthe trees as a mattress.”

Danny thinks about a Giant Daddy lying on amountain, crushing all the trees and bears and otheranimals and the Castle in the Clouds with his back andarms, and his legs would be long enough to crushMoultonborough and the other towns too, maybe his feetwould dangle into Winnipesauke and cause huge waves,drown the poor ducks, flood everything.

Danny says, “That would hurt.”

* * * *

At night the electricity goes out, but it’s okay becausethey have two lanterns and lots of candles. They sit in the

back yard around a football-shaped charcoal grill eatinghotdogs and holding sticks with marshmallows skeweredon the tips. The smoke keeps the bugs away. They singloud to keep the bears away. Danny sits on Mommy’s lapand tells stories about magic and the adventures of SpeedBoy and Giant Daddy. Then Tom carries him to bed andEllen carries a candle. They kiss him goodnight. Dannycloses his eyes. He almost knows why they are still herewhen everyone else is disappearing, but he can’t quite getthere, can’t reach it, like the night he tried to send his earsout to the noises.

Danny tries to send his ears out again and this time hehears his parents in the hallway. They speak with onevoice. He hears words that he doesn’t understand. Theymight be arguing and they might be laughing and theymight be crying but it doesn’t matter, because Dannyknows tonight was the best night of their vacation.

Friday

Danny wakes up before anyone else and goes into thesunroom. There’s morning mist and a bear on the frontlawn. The bear is black and bigger than Danny’s world,although that world seems to be shrinking. Danny thinksbears, even the dumb-looking Teddy bears, always know

more about what’s going on than the other animals andit’s part of what scares Danny. He’s scared now but hewants a better view so he opens the front door and standson the elevated stoop, his hand on the door, ready to dashback inside if necessary. The bear runs away at the soundof the door and it disappears. Danny hears it crashingthrough some brush but then everything goes quiet. Whywould a bear be afraid of him?

Now that it’s gone Danny steps outside, the wet grasssoaking his feet. He says, “Hey, come back.” He wants toask the bear, where are all the people? The bear mustknow the answer.

* * * *

Danny and Ellen sit out back, playing Go Fish at thepicnic table. Tom went shopping for supplies, a phrase heused before leaving, by himself. He’s been gone most ofthe morning.

Danny loses again but Ellen calls him the winner.Danny says, “Mommy, pretend you didn’t know it

was a beautiful day.”Ellen shuffles the cards. “So it’s really rainy and cold

out, right?”“No. There’re no clouds. And the sun is out and super

hot. It’s a beautiful day.”They play more card games. They play with Beth.

She’s almost ready to walk by herself but she still falls,and after she falls, she rips out fistfuls of grass and stuffsit in her mouth. They eat lunch. They nap.

Tom comes home after the naps. Supplies fill the car,including a mini-trailer hitched to the back. Tom gets outof the car and gives everyone an enthusiastic kiss andputs Danny on his shoulders. Ellen shrinks as he goes up.

Ellen says, “Did you see anybody?”Tom whispers an answer that Danny can’t hear

because he’s above Daddy’s head.Ellen says, “What you got there in the trailer?”“A generator.”“Really? You know how to set one of those up?”“Yup.”Danny comes back down.“Where’d you learn how to do that?”“I just know, okay?”Ellen goes back to the picnic table with Beth. Tom to

the trailer and the generator. There are no moreenthusiastic kisses.

Danny watches Tom setting up the generator. Hesays, “Daddy, pretend you didn’t know this was abeautiful day.”

“It’s not a beautiful day.”“No, it is! There’re no clouds. And the sun is out and

super hot. It’s a beautiful day, Daddy. I just know, okay?”

Saturday

They leave the car at the cottage and walk the mile tothe beach. They don’t carry much beach stuff. Beth isasleep in the stroller. Danny has on his swimming trunksbut his parents are wearing shorts and tee shirts. The tripto the beach is for him. His parents don’t know it, butDanny has the yellow magic paper folded up in hispocket.

Danny asks, “Is today supposed to be the last day ofvacation?”

Ellen says, “I think we’re going to stay here a littlewhile longer.”

Tom says, “Maybe a long while longer.”Ellen says, “Is that okay?”“Sure.”Tom says, “Maybe we’ll go check out that Castle in

the Clouds tomorrow.”Danny almost tells them about the bear. Instead he

says, “Mommy, pretend you didn’t know we were still onvacation.”

They pass empty driveways of empty cottages. Danny,for the first time, is really starting to feel uneasy about thepeople being gone. It’s like when he thinks about whyand how he got here and how are his parents his parentsand how is his sister his sister, because if he thinks toomuch about any of that he probably won’t like theanswers.

The beach lot is empty. They stake out their regularspot next to the tree and its duck sign. There are ducks onthe shore scratching the sand and dipping their bills in thewater. It’s another beautiful day.

Tom says, “I don’t get it. I thought this is whereeveryone would want to be.”

Ellen finishes for him. “Especially now.”The ducks waddle over. They don’t know the law.

Tom pulls out a bag of Cheerios, Beth’s snack, and tossesa few on the sand. The ducks converge and are greedy.

Ellen pushes the stroller deeper into the shade awayfrom the ducks and says, “Are you sure we can sparethose, Mr. Keeper-of-the-Supplies?” It walks like a jokeand talks like a joke but it isn’t a joke.

Danny says, “Daddy! Don’t you remember the sign?It’s against the law to feed the ducks.” Danny looksaround, making sure the people who aren’t there stillaren’t there.

“It’s okay now, buddy. I don’t think anyone will careanymore. Here, kiddo.”

He takes the Cheerio bag from Daddy. Daddy pats hishead. Danny digs a hand deep into the bag, pulls it out,and throws Cheerios onto the sand. The ducks flinch andscatter toward the water, but they come back and feed.

Paul G. Tremblay has had fiction appear in various publications includingRazor Magazine and Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of theWest Memphis Three (2004 Arsenal Pulp Press). In July 2005 Primepublished an expanded re-release of Compositions for the Young and Old, ashort fiction collection featuring an introduction from Stewart O’Nan. Theauthor comments: “I wrote this story upon returning from a stay inMoultonborough, NH. Of course, my vacation was infinitely more enjoyablethan the one in the story. Although, it really is against the law to feed theducks in Moultonborough.”

Interview: Theodora GossMatthew Cheney

Theodora Goss is the author of a chapbook of storiesand poems, The Rose in Twelve Petals (Small BeerPress), and a collection of stories, In the Forest ofForgetting (Prime Books). Her work has appeared inRealms of Fantasy, Alchemy, Strange Horizons,Polyphony, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, andelsewhere, and has been reprinted in various anthologiesof the year’s best science fiction and fantasy. She is arecipient of the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry.

Born in Hungary, she currently lives in Boston withher husband, daughter, and cats, in an apartment that, shehas said, “contains the history of English literature fromBeowulf to Octavia Butler and not enough bookshelves.”She is a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University, workingon a dissertation about the links between such subjects asgothic literature, Victorian anthropology, and Darwinism.

This interview was conducted via email in January2006. I had been lucky enough to talk with Dora a fewtimes about writing and reading, and so I knew that shecould passionately and intelligently articulate the value of

fantasy literature. Recently, fantasy of various sorts hasbeen attacked by quite different groups. The success ofthe Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies and thegrowing popularity of fantasy books for both children andadults has caused a backlash from not only thepredictable critics of anything “escapist”, but also fromsome science fiction writers who have claimed thatfantasy is stealing science fiction’s readers and,essentially, making everyone stupid. Knowing how wellDora could express an alternative view, I sent her onequestion after another about the subject, and shegraciously attacked them all.

* * * *

How do you decide if something is to be a story or apoem? Is there a relationship between prose andpoetry?

They’re both made up of words . . .Seriously, I think of prose and poetry as existing on a

continuum, the endpoints of which are conversation(informal, broken) and song (formal, rhythmic). They aredistinguishable, certainly, but think of Greer Gilman,Kelly Link, Catherynne Valente, Sonya Taaffe, Holly

Phillips . . . They all write prose that is poetic, that usescertain poetic techniques, although they all sound quitedifferent. So, prose and poetry are qualities, rather thandistinct kinds, of literature. Poetry can be found in a story,just as prose can be found in a poem. I realize, of course,that in part I’m dissecting your terminology, separatingfour terms: story and poem (which are literary forms), andprose and poetry (which are literary qualities). I’m surethat someone has said this much more clearly. Therelationship between prose and poetry is the relationshipbetween walking and dancing. Both involve moving yourfeet.

I’m not sure how I decide whether to write a story or apoem. Usually I have an idea of the content: an imagecomes to me, and I have to decide how to put it intowords. Sometimes they’re words that walk, andsometimes they’re words that dance. But sometimes thewords come first, and they’re either prose or poetry. Theyjust come out that way. I know how unfashionable thissounds, describing writing as an intuitive process; we aresupposed to be professionals now, turning out a certainnumber of words a day, always inspired at 9:00 a.m. But Ithink stories and poems tell you how they want to bewritten, what they want to be. At least, I know that whenI try to write them differently, they fail. (Well, perhaps

they fail anyway. But they have more chance of successwhen I somehow find their rhythm.)

What would be an example of prose being found in apoem?

Let me give you two examples, of . . . well, you’ll see.Here is the first one:

The nights now are full of wind and destruction;The trees plunge and bend and their leaves flyHelter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them

and they liePacked in gutters and choke rain-pipes and scatter

damp paths.

Also the sea tosses and breaks itself,And should any sleeper fancying that he might findOn the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his

solitude,Throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to

walk on the sand,

No image with semblance of serving and divinepromptitude

Comes readily to handBringing the night to order and making the world

reflectThe compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his

hand;

The voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appearThat it is useless in such confusion to ask the nightThose questions as to what, and why, and wherefore,Which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an

answer.

And here is the second:

Tell you a story of what happened once: I was uphere in Salem at a man’s named Sanders with a gang offour or five doing the haying. No one liked the boss. Hewas one of the kind sports call a spider, all wiry armsand legs that spread out wavy from the humped bodynigh as big’s a biscuit. But work! that man could work,especially if by so doing he could get more work out ofhis hired help. I’m not denying he was hard on himself. Icouldn’t find that he kept any hours—not for himself.Daylight and lantern-light were one to him: I’ve heardhim pounding in the barn all night. But what he liked

was someone to encourage. Them that he couldn’t leadhe’d get behind and drive, the way you can, you know, inmowing—keep at their heels and threatened to mow theirlegs off. I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks (wecall that bulling). I’d been watching him. So when hepaired off with me in the hayfield to load the loads,thinks I, look out for trouble.

Your average intelligent college student could tell youthat the first one is poetry: the elevated diction; therhythm, like the tides of the sea that “tosses and breaksitself” in the poem; the end and internal rhymes. And thatcollege student could probably identify the second one asprose. After all, it’s written in the casual speech of thehired man, abrupt, slangy. Except that the first is fromVirginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, and the second isfrom Robert Frost’s “The Code.” All I’ve done is changethe length of the lines and the capitalization. If you read itcarefully, the Frost paragraph will begin soundingstrange, because it’s in iambic pentameter and we don’tspeak in iambic pentameter. And he uses inversions (“byso doing” instead of “by doing so”) to get the rhythm hewants, and some internal rhymes (“wavy” . . . “body”).Also, he fills out a line with a not particularly necessaryaside (“we call that bulling”). But there’s quite a bit of

prose in his poetry, and deliberately so, because he wantsto capture the sound of a man speaking. So, that’s anexample of prose being found in a poem.

Does your academic work have an effect on yourfiction and poetry, do you think?

Yes! It keeps me from writing.Seriously, what I’ve really done over the years,

academically, is read a lot of books. And that has aneffect, of course. I said earlier that writing is an intuitiveprocess, but it can only be intuitive if the writer alreadyunderstands technique. A choreographer, for example, hasto know dance steps, and the different ways in whichthose steps can be linked, and the different ways that theyhave been linked by other choreographers. The more heknows about dance and what other choreographers havedone, the more he will have at his disposal when intuitioncomes. For a writer, that means words and how they havebeen used by other writers. So the only way to acquiretechnique is to read, and to read as much as possible. Andconsciously. When I was writing “Miss Emily Gray,” Iknew that it was a Henry James story, and specifically aWings of the Dove story. James said, about writing Milly

Theale, that he wanted to write around and around her,without ever touching her directly. That’s what I wantedto do with Miss Emily. I borrowed his technique. (Orstole it, if that sounds more exciting.) Reading booksclosely, which is what academic work requires you to do,has given me ways of writing that I would not otherwisehave. It has also shown me what the best writers can do,and how often I fall short.

But when people ask me this question, they usuallywant to know to what extent my writing has beeninfluenced by literary theory. The answer to that is, I haveno idea. I know “Rose in Twelve Petals” has been calleda postmodern fairy tale. But I’m not sure that the mostimportant thing about the story is its lack of center, thefragmentation of the story into competing narratives(which sounds like something Derrida might discuss, tothe extent I understand Derrida). Perhaps the importantthing is our longing for a particular narrative, the one thatends happily ever after, and the idea that whatever welong for, we are responsible for creating. At the risk ofsounding highfalutin’, it sometimes seems to me that mystories are about the impossibility and necessity of actingin the world, which doesn’t sound particularlypostmodern. It’s as old as Hamlet. Or maybe they’re justabout fairies and witches!

Why are myths, legends, folktales, and fairy talesrelevant to the contemporary world?

I’m not sure why relevance should be a criteria forliterature. I say this not because you necessarily think itshould be, Matt, but because so many critics seem tothink so. What does relevance mean, exactly? Does itmean that a story should show us only the society weinhabit? Does it mean (it often does mean) that it shouldteach us something, rouse us to reform our society? Thatseems to me rather Victorian, as though every bookshould be Nicholas Nickleby. Of course there’s no reasonthat literature shouldn’t be relevant. But, and I don’t quiteknow how to say this, relevance is a secondary concern.The first concern is love. If we didn’t love Shakespeare,we wouldn’t care about his relevance, about whether hishistorical plays are critiques of the monarchy. If we didn’tlove Jane Austen, it wouldn’t matter to us whether or not,in Mansfield Park, she is referring to the slave trade.Literature is not primarily important because it’s relevantbut because we love it, because we read it again andagain. To dismiss Austen because she does not engagewith the politics of her time, or assert her importance byinsisting that she does in coded terms, misses something,which is that literature appeals, before anything else, to

whatever in us responds with aesthetic pleasure, with lovefor a work of art. I hope that makes some sense? Just so,even if fantasy were not relevant to our modern world,that would give us no reason to dismiss it.

But to answer your question. There are several waysin which fantasy is relevant to our modern world. Thefirst is that our world is fantastical. Think of the politicaland economic beliefs that we live by. Was theinevitability of socialist revolution any more real than thatmythological creature, the chimera? Haven’t ourpresidents attempted to turn themselves into legendaryfigures or folk heroes, especially on the campaign trail?I’ve said this before, so forgive me for repeating myself,but our stock market operates on the Tinkerbell principle:it exist only so long as we believe in it. Imagine a roomfulof brokers clapping their hands and saying, “I believe inMicrosoft!”. Our world is permeated by the fantastic.That’s why fantasy has become so popular, I think. Notbecause it offers an escape from our world, but because itexpresses something fundamental about it. It resonateswith our experience of what we, optimistically, callreality. But, and this is a second answer, our modernmyths and legends and fairytales are somehow poorer, Ithink, than the old ones. The poodle that exploded in themicrowave? He isn’t exactly Cerberus, guarding the gates

of Hell. There is something deeply authentic about the oldstories, about Odysseus’ return to Ithaca or Red RidingHood’s adventures with the wolf, that is older and morefundamental than the technologized, globalized world welive in. What I don’t want to do, here, is sound as thoughI’m sentimentalizing the old stories. I’ve heard, oftenenough, that myths express the “deepest parts ofourselves,” and it begins to sound like a Hallmark card.Perhaps I should say that they are fundamentalexpressions of human art, patterns from which otherstories can be, and have been, made.

Do you think a writer has to choose between thereality of “the technologized, globalized world we livein” and the deep authenticity of the old stories? Areour modern myths mutually exclusive with the oldmyths? Why not just read the old stories, why botherwith contemporary writers?

First, what do you mean by reality? Thetechnologized, globalized world is part of my realitybecause I spend long hours on the computer. There aresignificant parts of the world for which it is not reality, forwhich whether the rains will come, or the children will befed or die of malaria, are reality. The old stories are

authentic because they represent the deepest, mostconstant human experiences and impulses: we still feellost, we still need bread, we still want to return home. Westill want to marry happily. We still fear death. Thetechnologized, globalized world is a part of reality, butonly a part. Of course we can adapt the old stories to it, ifwe want to, turn Odysseus into Oswald, a lawyer whocan’t make his connection home to Ithaca, New York.That is part of their authenticity, that they can berewritten. But why should we have to choose anything:between modernity and our history, between the newstories and the old? I see why you’re asking: there seemsto be a sense out there, somewhere in the ether (or on theinternet), that modernity requires us to write a certainway, to tell certain kinds of stories. There is exactly oneuse for that sort of attitude: it gives writers anotherexpectation to confound.

The century cannot tell writers what to write. That’swhat writers are for: to tell the century how it is to bewritten.

We should bother with contemporary writers becausewe are human beings, and we love the new as much asthe old. We want both the new and old stories. Whyshould we choose? I don’t intend to.

But really and seriously, this is important: if you start

a story by thinking about what you ought to write, of whatought to be written, you’re lost. You’re not listening. Youhave to listen to the story. That’s why workshops areuseful, but only in a limited way. No one else can writeyour story; no one else can hear how it ought to go.

If literature is important because we love it, what is itwe’re loving?

I think it depends on the piece of literature and theperson. I love Austen because of her lack ofsentimentality. It allows her to see that love is partlyselfish, that when we fall in love with another person, wealso fall in love with the self that person would allow usto become. Elizabeth doesn’t just fall in love with Darcy,or with Pemberley (as a more recent reading claims). Shefalls in love, partly, with the Elizabeth she could becomewith Darcy, at Pemberley. She sees that at Pemberley shecould become a fuller self, a freer Elizabeth than she hasever been, under the cramping influence of her family.And Austen, unlike Dickens, never sentimentalizespoverty—or parents. She knows that parents are both asource of security and a sort of prison. (I write this as aparent myself.) I love Isaak Dinesen because I don’t think

anyone writes more beautifully than she does. I can’t evendescribe how beautifully, as though her writing were theclearest, coolest water—which gives the most ordinarystones a translucence. (You know how you picked upstones from the stream when you were a child, and youtook them home, where they dried, and they were nolonger so beautiful, so shining.) She writes as though herstories were suffused with light. I love H.P. Lovecraftbecause, if you read carefully, you’ll find that he’s on theside of the monsters. His stories seem to be about the fearof a supernatural other, but they are really about the desirefor that other, for something utterly foreign and fantastic.I think Pickman, of “Pickman’s Model,” is a figure forLovecraft himself, for the sort of art he creates, an art thatdepends on consorting with ghouls. (I’ve heard his stylecalled excessive. I don’t see it. Excessive for what? Imight speak that way if I met a shuggoth.) I love AgathaChristie because, although she seems so conservativelyEnglish, she has a constant sympathy for the underdog.Her sleuths aren’t aristocrats; they haven’t gone to theright schools. They’re marginal figures: a comicalforeigner, an old maid. And her criminals are never theundesirable sons or frightened parlormaids who are firstaccused. They are always, as Hercule Poirot says in Mrs.McGinty’s Dead, “perfectly nice people.” Respectable,

secure. But murderers.So, that’s what I love. What do you love? I’m sure

your authors would be different, and your reasons. Theliterature that lasts does so because many people haveloved it, over a long period of time, each for his or herindividual reasons.

Fantasy writing has sometimes been accused of beingnostalgic, regressive, and even reactionary. Is it?

Sure, but not more so than any other sort of literature.Think about the ideas on which literary realism ispredicated: that (1) we live in a knowable reality (2) withpeople whose actions would make sense if we knew theirmotives (or, in post-Freudian literature, psychology), and(3) that we, and the reality in which we live, areimportant. If only! And, how Enlightenment! Ironically, itis science, which you could call the close and carefulstudy of reality, that calls realism into question. It showsthat if we were insects, we would see the world around usdifferently—and which is the legitimate view? Thisworld, seen through an insect’s eye, is as alien to us asthe surface of another planet. Someday, a comet willcrash into it, and then who will care whether DorotheaBrooke realizes that she’s in love with Will Ladislaw?

And yet George Eliot congratulated herself on excludinganything improbable from her novels because she wantedthem to be wholly “real.” Even in Eliot’s time, thatinsistence on a stable, predictable reality seems nostalgic.Reality, we are finding, is much stranger than realism.

Neither fantasy nor realism have a corner onconservatism or revolutionary ardor. And no book, either.C.S. Lewis could certainly be called conservative. Andyet in Prince Caspian, when Aslan returns to Narnia, hereturns as a sort of revolutionary, to overthrow therepressive Telmarine regime. What he awakens is apagan landscape, in which the trees move again and theanimals speak. When the river-god rises from the riverand the Bridge of Beruna falls, it is a moment ofliberation from political oppression. Perhaps this is whereliterary theory comes in: I’ve been taught, and I believe,that every good literary work contains ambiguities andcontradictions. The Narnia books are ostensibly Christian,but in them you see the affection for a romanticizedpaganism that is evident in other English books of thatera, such as Wind in the Willows. (I wonder, have theNarnia books ever converted anyone? I understood theChristian symbolism, of course, but all I wanted wasAslan.)

So, there are two things I want to say about literature.

First, if a book is a good book, you will not be able to pinit down to one political meaning. It will be bothconservative and revolutionary, although not perhaps inequal measures. And second, the wonderful thing aboutliterature is that if we don’t like stories, we can rewritethem. Someone will eventually rewrite the Narnia booksfrom Jadis’ point of view, as Neil Gaiman has writtenfrom Susan’s.

Readers, and by implication writers, of fantasy havebeen accused of running away from the problems ofthe contemporary world, of giving up on the future infavor of daydreams about a simpler past. Is mostfantasy writing, then, in flight from the horrorswrought by modern realities?

OK, we need to go back, because we’re using theword “fantasy” in different ways. What you’re talkingabout, I think, is the three-volume fantasy series—J.R.R.Tolkien’s progeny. That’s certainly one kind of fantasy,but it’s not the only kind. I said that prose and poetry areon a continuum: the lyric might be an example of purepoetry, and conversational speech an example of pureprose. But there are any number of possibilities inbetween. The best prose writing will have poetry in it, and

the best poem will contain elements of prose. Fantasy andrealism are also on a continuum. They are not literarygenres but ways of writing, and even of approaching theworld. I believe that we, as writers, have two oppositeimpulses: to describe our world as accurately as possible,that is, to represent, and to create something that we havenever seen before, to imagine. Every story containsfantasy and realism, in different proportions. Pure fantasy:perhaps that would look like one of Lord Dunsany’sdreamscapes, where nothing in particular happens buteverything the narrator describes is fantastical. Purerealism: the best example I can think of is actually aparody, Mr. Bailey, Grocer in George Gissing’s NewGrub Street. And Gissing himself seems, to me, a writerfirmly on the realistic side of the continuum.

So, is the three-volume fantasy novel escapist?Probably. I don’t read many such novels. Are there novelsthat are wholly realistic but equally escapist? Absolutely.But we all have a right to escape, even from the horrors ofthe modern world, even when it would be wonderful if wecould all, instead of escaping, do something about thosehorrors. I was born in a country that you couldn’t leave.You could only escape. Everyone has the right to escape.Only a tyrant will tell you otherwise. I read fantasy toescape from all sorts of things. I often read realistic fiction

for the same reason. Or even history. There’s nothing likehistory to help you escape from your own time. It’sreassuring to see that every time has had its horrors, andthat human civilization has managed, somehow or other,to survive. I can’t speak for any other human being in theworld; I can only speak for myself. There are limits to mystrength. I can’t spend my days watching the news. Aftertoo much horror, even horror becomes banal. It is readingWind in the Willows, which for me is almost pure escape,that makes me care about pollution.

But there is a theoretical question I haven’t answered,which is whether fantasy, understood as the impulse toimagine what does not exist in our world, has a greateraffinity with escape, allows us to escape more easily.You’d think it would, but actually I don’t think it does, nomore easily than the detective story, which is necessarilyrealistic. Because fantasy is as much about our world asrealism, although its relationship to our world is different,not directly but symbolically representational. Weimagine vampires because human relationships can bevampiric. Even the parent-child relationship has itsvampiric quality; the child takes life, takes resources,from the parent. We imagine mermaids and satyrsbecause we experience our own animal impulses; weknow we are partly beasts. Even Tolkien’s elves: we

know that there are people who are good and wise, thatthere is even a part of ourselves that is good and wise,that can create beautiful things. Fantasy is a differentway, a symbolic way, of representing reality.

I’ve badgered you enough about justifications andtheories of fantastical writing. Let’s move from theoryto practice, and to your own work. Children quiteoften feature as characters in your stories. Is this is aconscious decision on your part, or does it just seem tobe how the stories want to be told?

I like children. In many ways, they seem to me moresensible than adults. They’re more aware of when they’repretending. Adults pretend all the time, without beingaware of it.

And I want some happy endings. It’s difficult to writea story about adults that ends happily: our happiness is soalloyed, so mixed with other things. But I rememberbeing thoroughly happy, and thoroughly unhappy, as achild.

And then, sometimes I want to write aboutadventures. Adult adventures tend to be internal. Childrenhave better adventures. Their monsters aren’t necessarilya part of the self.

Those are three reasons, and three is a magicalnumber, and in a children’s story, that would be reason tostop.

Miss Emily Gray is a recurring character for you.What is her origin, and can we expect to encounterher again in the future?

She’s never told me where she comes from, and I’mtoo intimidated to ask. Anyway, she never answersquestions. But yes, you may see her again. She does seemto turn up.

Why did you choose to set “Lessons with Miss Gray”when and where you did?

It’s set in Ashton, North Carolina, because I knewthat I wanted to tell a story about Rose, Emma, andMelody, and that’s where they were living at the time.And it’s set one year after the events of “MeisterWilhelm” (which is set one year after the death of OttoLilienthal, who really died by crashing his glider) becauseI wanted a whole summer for the girls’ lessons inwitchcraft, and the summer after that they were

detectives.

One of my favorite stories of yours is “The RapidAdvance of Sorrow,” and I’ve wondered for a whilenow what inspired it, where it came from.

Have you noticed that when you ask me about theory,I can go on and on, but when you ask me about mywriting, I don’t quite know what to say? I don’t reallyknow how I write, or where my stories come from.“Sorrow” is about Budapest, of course—the mostbeautiful city in the world. When I was a child, I lost acountry—a rather large thing to lose. And now I writeabout it, I think, as a way of finding it again. But ofcourse I can’t, because my Hungary is an imaginarycountry, which may not be at all like the real one. It lookslike the real one, I’ve been to the real one—I visited whenthere were still men with Russian machine guns at theairport, I’ve visited since. But it may not be at all like thereal one internally. What I mean is, an inhabitant of thereal Hungary might say, you’ve gotten it all wrong. That’snot Hungary at all. And he would probably be right.

And “Sorrow” is about my childhood, and how it felt.About reality receding and passing into myth, if thatmakes sense. About a perpetual sense of strangeness.

You see? I’m no good at explaining my stories.

How did you go about selecting work for your newcollection and organizing it?

Selection was easy: I included all the stories I’vepublished, except for one that has only been collected inmy chapbook from Small Beer Press. And I tried toorganize them the way a good hostess would organize adinner party: I tried to make sure that stories seated nextto each other would not be too similar, would havesomething to say to each other. I tried to make sure theycould have a conversation.

What’s next for you?

First, I’m going to finish my PhD. Then, I’m going towrite, not around the edges of whatever else I’m doing,but in a serious and sustained way. And I’ll see whetheror not that drives me mad.

But, I have to say, I feel as though I’m at thebeginning of the beginning, as a writer. I want to say,wait. You’ll see. I have more to show you. I promise.

Matthew Cheney has previously interviewed Jeff VanderMeer, Holly Phillips,M. Rickert, K.J. Bishop, Sonya Taaffe, and Alan DeNiro, among others, forsuch places as SF Site, Infinity Plus, The Internet Review of Science Fiction,and his weblog, The Mumpsimus, which was recently nominated for a WorldFantasy Award. He has written reviews for Locus and Rain Taxi, and hisfiction has been published in Rabid Transit: Menagerie, Abyss & Apex,Failbetter.com, and Pindeldyboz.

Book ReviewsStefan Dziemianowicz, John Grant, Paula Guran,

Rich Horton, Stuart Jaffe, Victoria Strauss, and DougWinter

The Nine MusesForrest Aguirre & Deborah Layne, eds. Wheatland Press.$19.95(253p) ISBN: 0-9755903-6-7

Wheatland Press offers an original anthology offabulist stories by women, inspired (supposedly) by eachof the classical Nine Muses, Greek goddesses who eachhad sway over one area of the arts. There is a longintroductory essay by Elizabeth Hand, “The BeckoningFair Ones: Some Thoughts About Muses,” which wasfascinating for its historical look at the history of theconceptions of Muses (from the Greeks through RobertGraves and John Fowles), and for its personal to Handaspect. The stories are a mixed bag, generally quiteambitious but not always very successful. The connectionto the individual muses is a bit tenuous at times—but thatis mere quibbling. Still, one cannot be sure what Beth

Bernobich’s “The Colors of Tomorrow,” an original andinvolving Cinderella retelling, has to do with Thalia, theMuse of Comedy and Idyllic Poetry. Kit Reed’s “Spies” isa better fit, and it too is one of the better entries here, afunny Southern story about another group of goddesses,hinted at by their names (Ada, Clo, and Lally). Otherhighlights: Ruth Nestvold’s “Scraps of Eutopia,” analternate history of twentieth century feminist literaturetold in scraps of articles about an early twentieth centurywriter named Chloe Ramsay; Sarah Totton’s “TheTeasewater Five,” about a spinster sister and her bachelorbrother, and their unusually lifelike animal creations;Victoria Elizabeth Garcia’s wry look at a strange familywelcoming a daughter’s fiancé, “Ask For Her Hand.” Notall this book is as good, but it’s an interesting andworthwhile project, and worth reading for Hand’s essayalone.

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The Thousandfold Thought: The Prince of Nothing,Book 3R. Scott Bakker. Overlook Press. $26.95(560p) ISBN: 1-58567-705-1

Epics in the Tolkien mode are currently out of fashion

among the fantasy literati, which may explain why ScottBakker isn’t better known. This is a shame, because ThePrince of Nothing trilogy is literary fantasy in the truestsense: elegantly written, intelligently conceived, rich in itsexploration of the heights and depths of human nature,the limitations of free will, and the blindness of belief. It’salso a pretty darn good adventure story. This concludinginstallment is actually shorter than its predecessors; thefat page count is due to a hundred page-plus“Encyclopedic Glossary”—a book within a book,testament to the extraordinary depth and complexity withwhich Bakker has invested his world of Eärwa. As thenovel begins, Anasfrimbor Kellhus, the Warrior-Prophetwho survived his own execution, has achieved his aim ofsubverting the Holy War; he’s now its undisputed leader,worshipped as a god. The heathen Fanim have beenvanquished, and the road lies open to the holy city ofShimeh, where Kellhus’s true objective waits: his father,Moënghus, and the mystery of the Thousandfold Thought.Kellhus has married the prostitute Esmenet, formermistress of Mandate sorcerer Drusus Achamian; despitehis jealousy, Achamian still believes that only Kellhuscan avert the impending Second Apocalypse, and servesas Kellhus’s teacher, passing on the secrets of the Gnosis.As the army attacks Shimeh, the Scylvendi warrior

Cnaiür slips farther into madness, rival Schools of sorceryclash, and the shadowy Consult prepares for the return ofthe No-God, Mog. As in the trilogy’s first volume,Bakker sometimes bogs down in philosophical expositionand inner dialogue, but the narrative drive that made thesecond volume so riveting is also on display, especially inthe final chapters, which move effortlessly betweenintense personal encounters and thrilling battle scenes. Ina book crammed with memorable characters, thesuperhumanly gifted Kellhus is a standout—one of themost vivid and original creations of recent fantasy.Ambitious and literate, as emotionally involving as it isintellectually challenging, The Prince of Nothing is asignificant contribution to the genre.

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Bear DaughterJudith Berman. Ace. $16(422p) ISBN: 0-441-01322-8)

Judith Berman does more than borrow from NativeAmerican mythology to craft her novel Bear Daughter;she consumes the old stories and creates something newand unique. Cloud is the daughter of a bear father and

human mother, but she takes after Dad and has ursineform. One morning she wakes up to find she has beentransformed into a human girl. Her mother has wedanother human, King Rumble, and the king has bound theghosts of Cloud’s bear father and bear brothers—stealingthe bears’ power and not letting their souls rest. Cloudtries to live as a human girl, ignoring her bear side, butthe ghosts of her kin won’t leave her alone until she putsthem to rest. This may sound like a typical quest story,but Berman, an anthropologist specializing in NativeAmerican studies, uses her knowledge to create her afully-realized world that is inspired by, but not bound to,the concepts found in Native American myth. Cloud’sjourney brings her in contact with spirits and immortalsand all sorts of creatures, but Berman keeps the talegrounded in Cloud’s character. There is an earthy,flowing feel to her writing that serves her story well.Although the tale seems to go on about twenty pages toolong, this is a minor problem that does not detract from itsoverall merits.

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Magic StreetOrson Scott Card. Ballantine Books, $24.95

(391 p) ISBN: 0-345-41689-9

A mysterious Bag Man visits a prosperous suburbanLA home, induces the wife into a magical and magicallyswift pregnancy, then dumps the baby in nearbywasteland. It’s found by an adolescent, Cecil, who bringsit to spinster nurse Ura Lee. With Ura Lee as adoptivemother and Cecil as adoptive brother, the foundling,Mack, grows up to be a strange boy, loved by and yetdistanced from the locals. Quite who he is begins tobecome evident when he finds the “skinny house,” whichis invisibly thin until you learn how to see and enter itsdriveway. There he discovers the Bag Man, who is Puck,and the portal to a Fairyland riven by the contest of willsbetween Titania—who is deliciously incarnate in themortal world—and an encaged Oberon. Can Mack,helped by Cecil, Ura Lee, Titania, and a reluctant Puck,save our world from destruction by a released andwrathful Oberon? Magic Street occupies Charles de Lintterritory, and has a very similar feel; though by no meansa bad book, it ranks only alongside de Lint’s lesssuccessful works. It gets off to a great start – the first onehundred pages or so are tremendous, marred only byoccasional prose sloppinesses that are noticeable becauserare – but then Card spends a long period seemingly

uncertain as to where he’s actually taking this: someinfuriatingly cutesy bits of dialogue read like attempts todivert the reader’s attention, through unwitty wit, fromthe loss of focus. This long doldrum tract erodes thesuspension of disbelief and thereby subverts what wouldotherwise be a spectacular climax. One commendablefeature, rare in this form of urban fantasy, is that all thecharacters, human and fairy, are black, and Card bringsthem excellently to life. Overall, it’s because of thesecharacters that the book’s worth reading.

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Glass SoupJonathan Carroll. Tor. $24.95(320p) ISBN: 0-765-31179-8)

Jonathan Carroll has an ease with language thatmakes the most outlandish scenes flow as if thecharacters were strolling through a park instead of talkingto a bus-driving octopus. In his latest novel, Glass Soup,people die and their dreams and nightmares make up theirafterlife. Eternity is, therefore, a bizarre place (hence, thebus-driving octopus), but it’s the natural order of things.When Isabelle Neukor crosses from life to death to

retrieve her dead lover, Vincent, and then returns to life,she destroys that natural order. To further complicate thescenario, Chaos has become sentient and wants tocontinue causing, well, chaos. Oh, and Isabelle iscarrying a baby who just might fix everything . . . unlessChaos can trap her in the land of dead forever. Despitethis action-packed description, the book itself is quiet.Characters talk and think and remember. As they muddlethrough a process of learning how things work, the readermuddles along with them. That, ultimately, becomes acentral theme: when we earn knowledge we understand itfar better than when we are just handed the knowledge.Like many great surrealists, Carroll has a biting wit andwonderful sense of comic timing that saves him frompretentiousness. Carroll makes the reader laugh just as hejuxtaposes the humorous moment with horrible sadness.He keeps you guessing and, in doing so, makes you earnthe knowledge the book has to offer. Glass Soup is adelightful way to spend some time.

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The Scarlet Fig, or, Slowly Through the Land of StoneAvram Davidson, Henry Wessells & Grania Davis, eds.The Rose Press. $49.95

(285p) ISBN: 1-9542877-1-6

Some books have significance and value beyond theirpure value as novels. Certainly The Scarlet Fig is onesuch—the long-awaited third Vergil novel from the lateAvram Davidson. Its value as fiction is high enough,mind you. It’s very characteristic of late Davidson, stuffedwith evidence of his erudition, the prose complicated,eccentric, enjoyable for those of us who have a taste forDavidson’s prose. (That said, often a bit prolix, perhaps abit too precious.) The story concerns Vergil’s travels afterhe leaves Rome (“Yellow Rome”), fearful of accusationsof having tarnished a Vestal Virgin, and also menaced bypiratical Carthaginians. He visits many strange shores:Corsica, Tingitayne, the Region called Huldah (and itsbeautiful eponymous ruler), the island of theLotophageans, where he drinks of the Scarlet Fig, andfinally the Land of Stone in North Africa. All along wewitness much magic and many wonders -– all reflectingthe altered Rome of Davidson’s Vergil Magus, a Romereflecting the legends that accumulated in the MiddleAges: so, gloriously grotesque satyrs, victims of thecockatrix, the dogs of the Guaramanty, etc. I enjoyed itgreatly, particularly the character of Vergil and the mix ofdarkness and strangeness throughout. It is also beautifully

presented: a large handsome hardcover, with beautifulillustrations, and much excellent additional material tothe novel: afterwords by both Davis and Wessells, andseveral appendices including a few “deleted scenes” andreproductions of some notecards from Davidson’scollection (Encyclopedia) of Vergilian research.

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The Dark DestroyerJohn Glasby. Sarob Press. £26.50(187p) [No ISBN]

In the 1950s and 60s, John Glasby infused hiscontributions to the British neo-pulp Supernatural Storieswith occasional references to Lovecraftian monsters andCthulhu Mythos paraphernalia. This first novel-lengthweird tale to be published under his own name (he wroteabundant others, and entire issues of short fiction, undermultiple pseudonyms) reads very much like a vintage talefrom those years. Alan Garvey, a specialist in theparanormal, is summoned to the rural British town ofRedforde by his physician friend Paul Weston toinvestigate a series of bizarre events that appear to havefollowed construction crew dynamiting sites on the

nearby moors: people are dying, their corpses arewalking, and shadowy beings are being glimpsed aroundthe town. Soon after his arrival, Alan establishes that thedemolitions team inadvertently liberated an otherworldlymonster, which legend and local history claim the sinisterVernis family called down centuries before. Only Alan,with his formidable skills as an occult investigator,knows the correct rituals for disposing of the horror, butnot before it wreaks considerable havoc about the town.Plots of this sort drove any number of Hammer or Amicushorror films, and Glasby’s novel has a definite cinematicfeel, from its opening “teaser” sequence featuring thedoomed construction to crew, to its parade of disposableindividuals who are introduced only to be dispatched withgruesome abandon. The story is thuddingly formulaic, butalso effectively atmospheric in spots. Even though heparaphrases Lovecraft, Glasby avoids the florid prose thatdamns most Lovecraft pastiches, and the result is a better-than-average story that will be of interest mostly toCthulhu Mythos fans.

* * * *

The Shell CollectorChristopher Golden. Cemetery Dance. $30

(120p) ISBN: 1-58767-114-X

Christopher Golden offers some nice New Englandatmosphere but little else in this competently written butcontrived boogeyman story for Cemetery Dance’s novellaseries. Richie Feehan sees something nasty in his lobstertrap. Another lobsterman finds something nastier in his.Bodies are missing from the graveyard. Rich thinkssomething must be done! His brother Jim says the policeare doing something. Rich gets involved anyway. Badthings happen. Rich gets away because even in this day ofradios attached to uniforms and cell phones in everypocket he is told to “go get help!” There is a big fightwith a monster at the end. If this inanity is not enough ofa caution, the underlying brotherly enmity that supposeddrives the plot is nonexistent. Rich and Jim get alongbetter and seem more compatible than most brothers whothink of themselves as close. One notable literaryachievement is the possible introduction of the word“epiphanette” (meaning “little epiphany”) into print. Thata character who is supposedly a blue-collar regular guywould think he was having an epiphany of any size is butone of the many incongruities of The Shell Collector.Golden must have tossed this one off while napping.

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The Town That Forgot How to BreatheKenneth J. Harvey. St. Martin’s Press. $24.95(480p) ISBN: 0-31234-222-5

In The Town That Forgot How To Breathe, Canadiannovelist Kenneth J. Harvey adapts a too-familiar settingof horror novels—an isolated town besieged byinexplicable events—into an unsettling, if didactic,fantasy. The North Atlantic offers an increasingly strangebounty to the fished-out village of Bareneed,Newfoundland: albino sharks, corpses of dead seafarers,mermaids, ghosts. As these and other eerie intrusionsunravel the once tight-knit community, the townsfolksuffer a malady that causes them to forget how to breathe.Only a fortunate few are immune, including TommyQuilty, a seer, and doddering Miss Laracy, who sawfairies, once upon a time . . . The allegory is signaled bythe village’s name. Our world of Wal-Marts, Hummers,and Double Whoppers with Cheese is not a world meantfor wonders, you see. Year Zero for Bareneed was 1952.As Miss Laracy laments, “ ‘Twas da year da televisioncame.” And when the tube flickered to life, the fairies andspirits vanished, victim to “I Love Lucy” and the

Chevrolet. It’s impossible not to read Harvey’s noveloutside the long shadow of Stephen King; Bareneed isanother incarnation of ‘Salem’s Lot (which itself was anincarnation of Don Robertson’s Paradise Falls). LikeKing’s better multiple viewpoint novels, The Town ThatForgot How To Breathe threads character to characterwhile sustaining an atmosphere of weird imminence (and,yes, immanence). Harvey’s prose is suitably sharp andentertaining. His witty inversion of the supernaturalhorror novel is to embrace progress, not the past, as theessence of fear. But the novel succumbs to the allegory,which pounds and pounds through the text until thereader just wants to say, “Enough.” Or maybe forget, justfor a minute, how to breathe.

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OutsidersNancy Holder & Nancy Kilpatrick, eds.Roc. $14.95(336p) ISBN: 0-451-46044-8

This is a mostly horror-oriented anthology. As thecover copy puts it, “stories from the edge.” In this case,“the edge” often means the edge of society—forgotten

people, poor or handicapped or discriminated against.And of course it also means the edge of “experience” —transgressive sex or violence or both. It’s a pretty solidcollection of stories. Among the highlights: Tanith Lee’s“Scarabesque” is a novel excerpt that works fairly well onits own, about a mousy girl obsessed with vampires andwhat happens when she meets a real one. Jack Ketchum’s“Lighten Up” is an amusing story about revenge onoverzealous anti-smoking fanatics. Melanie Tem’s “TheCountry of the Blind” is a powerful story of a homelesswoman who insists on blindness as the price of entry toher “gang.” Thomas S. Roche’s “Violent Angel” is trulyviolent—perhaps too much so for some tastes—buteffective, about a loser piece of muscle who finally wisesup to the way his leader is using him. John Shirley’s“Miss Singularity” is as close to science fiction as thisbook gets, and its fascinating for most of its length, abouta girl in a lifeless suburb considering suicide as herparents’ marriage decays, and what happens when herfather’s physics experiment interacts oddly with herconsciousness. Alas, the story’s end fumbles thingsterribly, settling for an easy resolution and easy jabs atsuburbia. Poppy Z. Brite’s “The Working Slob’s Prayer”is a very engaging sketch of the life situations of severalworkers at a New Orleans restaurant. And there is

intriguing work from Steve Rasnic Tem, Léa Silhol,Caitlín R. Kiernan, Kathe Koja, and others.

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Already DeadCharlie Huston. Del Rey. $12.95(268p) ISBN: 0-345-47824-X

Fantasy-noir is a surprisingly under-representedgenre-blend, so it’s pleasing to greet any new recruit to itsmeager ranks. The fact that Already Dead is yet anothervampire novel might deter, but it’s well worthpersevering. Joe Pitt is a vampire gumshoe in aManhattan which is, unknown to almost all mortals,divided up among various vampiric Clans that keep a lowprofile through curtailing in various ways the instinct tosuck folk dry. The most powerful Clan is The Coalition,which controls everything from 14th Street to the top ofCentral Park. Pitt, however, lives in the Village, and thusmust deal primarily with The Society—a Clan ofpolitically radicalized vampires—and to a lesser extentThe Enclave, whose members seek the quasi-Nirvana ofnear-blood-starvation. A zombie is stalking the Villageand must be stopped. While trying to cope with this, Pitt

is hired by The Coalition’s enforcer to track a rich uptownmortal couple’s adolescent daughter, who has gonemissing on Society turf. In the best Hammett/Chandlertraditions, the two cases prove intertwined and Pitt’sclients are as duplicitous and deviously motivated as anybad guys. Sailing the best course he can between therocky shoals of the disputing Clans, Pitt must somehowsave the child, his own “life,” and his relationship withHIV-positive girlfriend Evie. Already Dead has irritations—in particular, the caricatured squabbling among thevarious radicals in The Society gets real tedious real fast—but it’s compulsively readable and satisfactorilydelivers a full hardboiled-fiction quota of snappy one-liners. If you enjoy noir, you’ll enjoy this a lot, becauseit’s a very good noir novel; if you’re looking for cool,sexy vampires, you’ll find the ones here are distressinglygritty and down-to-earth.

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Last Week’s ApocalypseDouglas Lain. Night Shade Books. $14.95(242p) ISBN: 1-59780-034-1

Douglas Lain is one of the most interesting new

writers to bubble up out of the world of small press SFpublishing these past few years, with original, moving,intelligent stories appearing mostly in small press zinesand ezines (though he first came to my attention with acouple of fine stories for Amazing). This is his debutcollection. His focus appears to be the “contemporarycrisis”: consumerism, globalism, war; with a fewcharacteristic obsessions marking the way (Reagan,nuclear war, alien invaders). Lain’s stories are oftenfunny, but darkly so. His characters are very wellportrayed, and not bad people either: usually decent menwho may not be terribly successful but who aren’t usuallycliché drifting losers either. Favorites include “TheHeadline Trick,” built around a plain goofy money-making idea but gaining its emotional kick from theintersection of the protagonist’s personal life andcontemporary events (revolving around the war in Iraq) asreflected in headlines; “Shopping at the End of theWorld,” in which Portland’s infrastructure collapses via astrange shredder at a Wal-Mart-like store; “The Word‘Mermaid’ Written on an Index Card,” about a sad youngman dealing with his father’s death and his attraction to apossible mermaid; and “’Identity is a Construct’ (andOther Sentences),” about (perhaps) AIs on a starshiptrying to understand humanity—or (perhaps) humans

trying to understand themselves. There is also a brandnew novella, “I Heard the News Today,” about nuclearwar, the Beatles, and a man having an affair as the worldends. Lain is certainly among those newer writers whosework sometimes gets labeled “slipstream”—for the lesserof such writers one sometimes feels “slipstream” is anexcuse for lack of rigor: for Lain, it is simply the rightartistic choice to communicate his themes, which are verymuch in the spirit of Sterling’s original definition of theterm: “a kind of writing which simply makes you feelvery strange; the way that living in the late twentiethcentury makes you feel.”

* * * *

TEL: StoriesJay Lake, ed. Wheatland Press. $17.50(174p) ISBN: 0-9755903-3-2

Jay Lake stuffs 28 stories into this shortish originalanthology, aiming at “experiments and extremes of styleand vision.” That means that most of the stories are short—which is probably appropriate (and occasionally arelief) given the often “radical” prose. Still it’s hardly asurprise that the longest stories here tend to be the best

(for one thing, that implies an author sufficiently incontrol of her “style” to sustain it at length). Two of thestories are reprints, and one of these is undoubtedly one ofthe most remarkable sustained triumphs of rigorousoriginal prosody in recent years: Greer Gilman’s “JackDaw’s Pack,” which is also the longest story in the book.The Gilman story opens the book strongly, and it closesstrongly as well, with Gregory Feeley’s “Fancy Bread.”Here the “experimental” aspect is not in the prose, whichis as ever with Feeley excellent—meticulous and toneperfect—but not “radical.” However the story isunconventional, beginning with our hero, Jack, escapingan ogre with a crust of bread, and following him througha very long life. The concern of the story is the makingand getting of bread, by fair means and foul, especiallyamong the poor—or, put more simply, economic history.Other likeable stories include the very promising newwriter Anil Menon’s “Love in a Hot Climate,” a funnystory about an appealing young Indian man hoping toimpress his beloved’s father by being the first venturecapitalist to back a time machine—alas, he hasmisunderstood a metaphor in an article by MiltonFriedman. Ian Creasey’s “In Profit and Loss” is also quitefunny, about love as venture capitalism. And Jetse deVries’s “Gaudi, Cons, and Spires” is and original and

exotic story of virtual architecture and bicyclemessengers. Space is lacking to mention other stories, butmany are intriguing even if not fully successful. No doubtthe book achieves its goal of showcasing “experiments.”The high points are quite satisfying, and even the weakerefforts are at least heartening in their ambition.

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Flaming LondonJoe R. Lansdale. Subterranean Press. $40(177p) ISBN: 1-59606-025-5

Ned the Seal, a creation of Dr. Momo (a mad scientistsupposedly immortalized as Dr. Moreau), has survivedthe swimming-with-the-fishes (sharks, really) finale ofLansdale’s novel, Zeppelins West, and, in the sequelFlaming London, meets up with Mark Twain and JulesVerne. A rip in space brings all worlds, real andimaginary, crashing together. Among other threats to theworld, H. G. Wells’ Martian invaders slice throughLondon while pirates hold barbaric drinking games on anisland of lost dinosaurs. Can Verne, Twain, Ned,Rikwalk (a forty foot Martian ape inspired by KingKong), a giant robot named Steam, and several others

save the world? Flaming London appears at first to besimilar to a Douglas Adams tale with famous and not-so-famous people thrown into a blender of crazy situations. Itwould have been enjoyable watching it go, but thin plotand zero character development need to be replaced withgreat comedy to make this recipe work. One stroke ofcomic delight near the end (a conversation regarding thebravery of Americans, the British, and the French) provesthat Lansdale has the wit to deliver the laughs, but heotherwise opts for repetitions of Ned’s desire to eat fish,scatological jokes, and a few masturbation references.Poop jokes can be funny, but by the eighth or ninthreference the word itself wears thin. Those who enjoyLansdale’s work, particularly Zeppelins West, willoverlook if not embrace these same things. For the rest,check out his much finer work such as Bubba Ho-Tep.

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A Dark God Laughing A Dream and a LieFiona McGavin. Immanion Press. £12.99280p. ISBN 1-9048-5322-6

In the bleak industrial city of Zoelon, smoke andchemicals from the factories poison the air and ground,

and the church burns witches on Wintertide’s Eve. Onlypart of the city belongs to humans—its vast Slumlandsare the province of the enteri, androgynous immortalbeings who claim that the world belonged to them beforemen built cities. Alix is a young factory worker hauntedby fragmentary memories of a former life, and by stirringsof a power he doesn’t understand. When his fellowworkers denounce him as a witch, he seeks refuge amongthe enteri—who, he learns, aren’t as decadent andpowerless as most humans believe. Enteri lore tells of agreat warrior named Flame, who will one day return andlead his dispossessed people to victory againsthumankind. Many believe that Flame’s return isimminent. But other forces are stirring—dark gods to theeast, strange magics to the north—and Zoelon is caughtbetween. There are familiar elements here—thephantasmagorical city, the urban elf-like enteri, the harshwitch-burning religion—but McGavin’s take on them isfresh enough, and her blending of them quirky enough, toavoid a sense of retread. Sympathetic characterizationsanchor an atmospheric narrative; vivid descriptive detailsevoke a strange dark world on the edge of violent change.The logic of the setting doesn’t always work (Zoelon isphysically convincing, but its social structure is far toogeneric), but the feel of it doesn’t falter. First in a trilogy,

this promising debut will be especially appreciated byfans of urban fantasy.

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Poison StudyMaria V. Snyder. Luna. $19.95(361p) ISBN: 0-373-80230-7

In a fantasy nation called Ixia, where only a few yearsbefore a corrupt monarchical system was overthrown infavor of a benevolent military dictatorship, the youngwoman Yelena has been condemned to death formurdering her guardian’s son. Called from her dungeonthe night before her execution, she is given a stark optionby Valek, chief sidekick of Commander Ambrose, thedictator: she can either go to the gallows or she canbecome the Commander’s taster, the servant who tasteshis food to check for poison. A dangerous job, but thepoison is far from the only danger to Yelena’s life, forpowerful General Brazell, her ex-guardian, seeks toavenge his son. And what plans does Irys, master-sorceress of the southern land Sitia, have for her . . . ? Ifthis all doesn’t sound remarkably familiar, then youhaven’t been reading enough genre fantasy. There aren’t

really too many plot surprises to be found in PoisonStudy, except perhaps that Brazell’s plan to usurp theCommander and perhaps then take over the worlddepends on his use of an addictively enhanced sweetmeatcalled Criollo—which is obviously chocolate. It’s a plotsurprise many readers could perhaps do without. PoisonStudy is smoothly written, and ambles along amiablyenough in its predictable way. Because Luna is primarilya romantic imprint (it’s a division, focusing on fantasy, ofHarlequin), we spend quite a lot of time on the growingawareness of Yelena that she’s falling in love with Valek,who’s returning the sentiment; since this is a romanticnovel, the bond is thunderingly obvious to everyone,readers included, about 200 pages before the twoprotagonists recognize it themselves. And to a greatextent that’s true of the rest of the plot. An adequate time-passer, but little more.

* * * *

The Ocean and All Its DevicesWilliam Browning Spencer. Subterranean Press. $40(195p.) ISBN: 1-59606-047-6

William Browning Spencer has taken more than a

decade to produce the contents of this slim volume of ninepreviously published stories. But, to paraphrase anotherSpencer—Spencer Tracy in Pat and Mike—“Not manystories, but what’s there is cherce.” Like the actor, theauthor’s voice is unique. Reality is mutable and themundane slips easily into the fantastic; black humor anddrollery are almost always part of the mix. The owner of asmall seaside hotel gets a glimpse of Lovecraftian horrorin the title story. The game of life gets a newinterpretation in “The Oddskeeper’s Daughter.” A youngwoman combines black magic, sex, and narrative prose totake vengeance on a womanizing professor in “Death ofthe Novel.” Love, innocence, and virtual reality arethemes of “Downloading Midnight.” “The HalfwayHouse at the Heart of Darkness” also deals with VR, butthrough the tale of an addict and a counselor who isforced into addiction himself by activists whose “spurious thinking . . . suggested a drowning person isdrowning by choice.” “Your Faithful Servant” reveals astartling symbiosis between servant and master. A littlegirl who speaks only in snatches of poetry is poisedbetween two worlds in “The Foster Child.” In “TheLights of Armageddon” the simple act of turning on thelights can end the world. The sublimely funny “TheEssayist in the Wilderness” ends with a chill after two

English professors leave their ivory tower and find natureis rather unnatural. After devouring Spencer’s collectioncover-to-cover most readers will be left disappointed onlybecause there is no more of his darkly delicious visionaryfiction.

* * * *

The Awakened CityVictoria Strauss. Eos. $25.95(464p) ISBN: 0-380-97892-X

The Awakened City takes full advantage of the richworld previously introduced in The Burning Land (2004)and provides a compelling ending to an epic tale ofclashing religious ideologies. Râvar, a survivor of thedestroyed settlement of Refuge and a powerful Shaper,assumes the role of the Next Messenger. Using illusionand charisma, preaching that the sleeping god Ârata hasarisen, he draws followers to the caverns he calls theAwakened City and plans his revenge against TheBrethren of the Way of Ârata. Gyalo Amdo Samchen,who had so loyally served the Brethern but has nowrenounced them, can neither accept he is the true NextMessenger nor completely deny it. His turmoil distracts

from the contentment of his marriage to the DreamerAxane and father-substitute to her infant daughter,Chokyi, Râvar’s child by rape. The Brethern are dividedon the meaning of what is occurring, desiring the comingof the new age but knowing it means their end. WhenRâvar kidnaps Axane and Chokyi, Gyalo—strugglingwith the significance of his own destiny—must find away to rescue them as Râvar marches his followers on theholy city of Baushpar. Strauss examines issues of faithand fanaticism by dividing the point of view between thebitter madman Râvar as he concocts a new mythology;the reluctant but faithful Gyalo; and a guardian of thetraditional religion, the Daughter Sundit. Axane’s role asthe quintessential nonbeliever is also crucial. Hermaternal strength adds dimension to a character who was,in the first book, unexceptionable. The fictional religion,the Way of Ârata, is convincing as a living—and shifting—faith. By the end, the many questions raised in TheBurning Land have been answered, some in a surprisingmanner. Fine thought-provoking and, at times, movingfantasy.

* * * *

Dreams and Visions

M. Jerry Weiss and Helen S. Weiss, eds.Starscape. $19.95(256p) ISBN 0-765-31249-2)

When an anthology works, it shines. When it doesn’t,it burns fast. Most, however, fall somewhere in between,and that is where Dreams and Visions finds its place. Thetheme is fantasy stories in which young adults are thecentral focus. Authors range from genre writers likeCharles de Lint to YA authors like Joan Bauer and thisdiversity is mirrored in the tales themselves. Some of thestories shine. Charles de Lint’s excellent “Dharma” is aghost story that succeeds due to deep characterization.Nancy Springer’s “The Youngest One” delightfullyjumbles a hodgepodge of characters into an outstandingtale. But the anthology’s focus is so broad the authorshave no constraints other than to put some type of fantasyelement in their tales. As a result, many of the storiesburn fast. “Depressing Acres” by Patrice Kindl follows anold woman who moves into a “new homeowner’s”development filled with children . . . her favorite treat. Itis humorous and engaging, but a bit predictable. JoanBauer’s opening story about a writer with writer’s block(a cliché tale of the writer’s characters coming to life tohelp out) manages to balance on a thin line between

success and annoyance—for some readers, the story willfall on annoyance. Rich Wallace’s “Allegro” is acharming tale of falling in love but the fantasy element isexceedingly thin. Most of the stories in Dreams andVisions are similarly flawed. They are well written, butcontain too little fantasy to be in a fantasy antho.

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The Twisted Root of JaarfindorSean Wright. Crowswing Books. £5.99(150p) ISBN: 0-9544374-4-6

Lia-Va is seven feet tall with skin as “black as ebony,her teeth whiter than the Elders of Elriad’s Citadel.” Shekills her father, thereby inheriting the throne of the Islandof Wisblakia, and is an addict enslaved to “roots” (whichare regurgitated upon someone’s death and contain thememories of the events leading up to the person’sdemise.) Abandoning her duties, Lia-Va is quickly off ona quest to solve “a Runeroot puzzle” accompanied only byIslan, a scrawny unprepossessing mute with a colossaltwo-headed axe, as her “back-eyes.” She’s bloodthirsty,offensive, nasty, and a bit raunchy: the tough nihilisticanti-hero we adore if male but seldom encounter as a

female. Wright’s prose is pedestrian but his furious pace,ample imagination, and audacious twists make up for it.Other flaws, however, are not so easily ignored. Thebook’s success is limited by detracting details that couldeasily have been fixed. Mentions of heroin, weed, andcrack—when other addictive substances have exoticnames or an etymologically sound label (like “rum”) orare, like the roots themselves, exotic—stick out.References to May [sic] West, rugby, empty plastic milkcartons, Fagin, and the like are even more painful. Thesame sloppiness is apparent (although a lack of spacenegates discussion here) in important plot elements and inLia-Va’s quest. In his Introduction, Wright hopes hisbook will extend the borders of speculative fiction anddefeat stereotype. Adequate editorial guidance forWright’s energetic talent might well have produced sucha book. (A good editor might have convinced Wright todrop that Introduction, too, as well as parts of hisAfterword.) The Twisted Root of Jaarfindor has thepotential to be a truly magical achievement but, aspublished, is an interesting disappointment awaitingrevision.

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Invisible PleasuresMary Frances Zambreno. American Fantasy. $25(244p) ISBN: 0-9610352-4-2

Each of the eighteen stories of Invisible Pleasuresfocuses on females who face adversity. A fabulous coverpainting, Symphony Fantastique by Douglas Klauba,balances a woman between the light and the darkfantastic and proves highly appropriate as the stories turntoward the shadows more often than light. Zambrenoleaves her most indelible impression when indulging herwickedly dark wit in stories like “Aunt Concetta’s Cat”(in which three children learn some lessons from anelderly auntie and a cat that always comes back) and“The Last One Left” (where the tables are turned on arapist). She even skewers authorhood itself in “WatchingGoldfish Die.” The author has a doctorate in medievalliterature and several of the stories are historical fantasy.In “A Craving for Oysters” a noblewoman calls on theghost of her dead husband for aid. A Saxon woman seeksto stop bloodshed between her father and husband andmakes a supremely difficult decision after consulting anold wise woman in “Choices.” Even a sword-and-sorceress tale like “Luck of the City” comes out a cutabove the usual when adventure is melded with historical

detail, in this case—sewers. There’s often more nuance ina Zambreno story than her straightforward style at firstsuggests. She plays with the themes of a woman’s worknever being done and the importance of family andgenerational ties—and the lack of them in modern life—in “The Ghost in the Summer Kitchen.” The mini-mystery“The Little Girl in the Picture,” in which two Catholicschoolgirls uncover the joys of primary source research,offers a rewarding if not intellectually demanding read.Many of the tales in this debut collection were firstwritten for young readers and Zambreno’s work, althoughnever challenging, is almost always enjoyable.

Contributions by: Stefan Dziemianowicz, John Grant, Paula Guran, RichHorton, Stuart Jaffe, Victoria Strauss, and Doug Winter.

About the EditorsFounding editor of Fantasy Magazine, Sean Wallace hasworked full-time for Wildside Press for both its book andmagazine divisions since 2001. In between editing theWorld Fantasy award-winning Prime Books imprint,issues of Fantasy Magazine, and volumes of the BestNew Fantasy and Horror: The Best of the Year anthologyseries, he occasionally plays a mean game of racquetball.He currently lives in Maryland, with his wife, Jennifer,and their two cats, Amber and Jade.

Co-editor of Fantasy Magazine, Paul G. Tremblay hasalso sold over fifty short stories to markets includingRazor Magazine, Chizine, Weird Tales, Interzone,Clarkesworld, Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings inSupport of the West Memphis Three, and Horror: TheBest of the Year, 2007 Edition. He is the author of theshort fiction collection Compositions for the Young andOld, which features an introduction from Stewart O’Nan,and the novella City Pier: Above and Below. He hasreally long, double-jointed fingers and toes, which makesup for his lack of uvula. Other fascinating tidbits can befound at www.paulgtremblay.com.