TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 75, August 2016

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial, August 2016

SCIENCE FICTION

Those Brighter Stars
Mercurio D. Rivera

The War of Heroes
Kameron Hurley

Taste the Singularity at the Food Truck Circus
Jeremiah Tolbert

Laika Comes Back Safe
Maureen F. McHugh

FANTASY

Trip Trap
Kevin J. Anderson and Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Assassin’s Secret
Adam-Troy Castro

The Red Piano
Delia Sherman

The Siren Son
Tristina Wright

NOVELLA

The Bone Swans of Amandale
C.S.E. Cooney

EXCERPTS

The Big Book of Science Fiction
Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer

NONFICTION

Movie Review: Ghostbusters
Carrie Vaughn

Book Reviews
Sunil Patel

Interview: Tim Powers
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Mercurio D. Rivera

Kevin J. Anderson & Sherrilyn Kenyon

Kameron Hurley

Adam-Troy Castro

Jeremiah Tolbert

Delia Sherman

Maureen McHugh

Tristina Wright

C.S.E. Cooney

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2016 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Elizabeth Leggett

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial, August 2016

John Joseph Adams | 971 words

Welcome to issue seventy-five of Lightspeed!

This month, we have original science fiction by Mercurio D. Rivera (“Those Brighter Stars”) and Jeremiah Tolbert (“Taste the Singularity at the Food Truck Circus”), along with SF reprints by Kameron Hurley (“The War of Heroes”) and Maureen F. McHugh (“Laika Comes Back Safe”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Adam-Troy Castro (“The Assassin’s Secret”) and Tristina Wright (“The Siren Son”), and fantasy reprints by duo Kevin J. Anderson and Sherrilyn Kenyon (“Trip Trap”) and Delia Sherman (“The Red Piano”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns.

For our ebook readers, we also have an ebook-exclusive reprint of the novella “The Bone Swans of Amandale,” by C. S. E. Cooney. For our book excerpt this month, we’re pleased to feature the introduction to The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, out this month from Vintage Books.

World Fantasy Award Finalists Announced

This year’s World Fantasy Award finalists have been announced, and we’re pleased to see that Alyssa Wong’s “nominated for everything” story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” (Nightmare, Oct. 2015) is nominated in the Short Fiction category. Major congrats to Alyssa! We’re also pleased to see frequent Lightspeed artist Galen Dara is a finalist for Best Artist, so huge congrats to her as well! And, of course, cheers too to all of the other finalists; you can find a complete list of them at locusmag.com.

Inaugural Eugie Award Finalists Announced

Finalists for the inaugural Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction (the Eugie Award), which “honors stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain,” have been announced, and we’re pleased to report that “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong (Nightmare, Oct. 2015) is among them!

The winner will be honored at Dragon Con, to be held September 2-5, 2016 in Atlanta, GA. Congrats to Alyssa and to all of the other finalists! For more information about the award, and a complete list of the finalists, visit eugiefoster.com.

Locus Award Winners

ICYMI, the Locus Awards winners were announced in late June. Alas, nothing Lightspeed- or Nightmare-related won, but as they say: it is an honor to be nominated. Alyssa Wong’s “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” (Nightmare, October 2015) and Amal El-Mohtar’s “Madeleine”(Lightspeed, June 2015)—both up for best short story—lost to “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld), and Brooke Bolander’s “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” (Lightspeed, February 2015)—up for best novelette—lost to Neil Gaiman’s “Black Dog” (Trigger Warning). In the editor category, yours truly lost out to David G. Hartwell, who sadly passed away in January. In any case, congratulations again to Alyssa, Amal, and Brooke, and to all of the other finalists, and thanks to all who voted for them (and me). You’ll find a complete list of the winners and other finalists at locusmag.com.

Shirley Jackson Award Winners

The 2015 Shirley Jackson Awards were presented on Sunday, July 10 at Readercon 27. Our only dog in that fight—Surprise! Alyssa Wong again!—alas, did not win. You can find a complete list of the winners and other finalists at shirleyjacksonawards.org.

Worldcon Ahoy

Worldcon is in Kansas City, MO this year, August 17-21. I’ll be there, and Skyboat Media (who, as you may know, also happens to be our podcast producer) will have space in the dealer’s room, where they’ll have a selection of their audiobook titles as well as some JJA-edited and -published materials for sale. I’ll be on some panels, of course, and will be attending the Hugo Awards ceremony, where I will either win or lose another Hugo, and will also see a Lightspeed story either win or lose another Hugo.

John Joseph Adams Books News

In my role as editor of John Joseph Adams Books for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I just acquired two books in a new series by Molly Tanzer (author of Vermilion).

The first book is Creatures of Will and Temper, a Victorian-era urban fantasy inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which épée-fencing enthusiast Evadne Gray and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only Evadne’s skill with a blade standing between them and certain death.

Publication of book one will likely happen in late 2017. Can’t wait for you all to read it!

Lightspeed Family Book News

Lightspeed’s own Wendy N. Wagner (managing/associate editor) has some good news to report: She just sold a new novel! She had previously published two novels in the Pathfinder Tales series—Skinwalkers and Starspawn—but now we’re pleased to announce that Angry Robot will be publishing her original SF novel called An Oath of Dogs. So please join us in extending HUGE CONGRATS to Wendy, and be sure to pre-order it early…and often! (For more information, check out the B&N profile about the book: bit.ly/oathdogs.)

• • • •

That’s all we have to report this month. I hope you enjoy the issue, and thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent and forthcoming projects include: What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been nominated ten times) and is a seven-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Nightmare Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

Those Brighter Stars

Mercurio D. Rivera | 6030 words

The call came through as I paced outside the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, puffing on an e-cig and watching my breath turn to vapor in the chill. “Hello?” The bald, skeletal image of a stranger stared back at me on my phone.

“Ava,” he whispered. “Oh, Ava.”

It took me a few seconds to regain my composure. “Dad?” I said.

“Promise me.” And those two words turned into our final disagreement—yet one more thing I have you to thank for. We argued about you, about whether I should notify you of his death when the time came. He begged me to tell you about Katie. And about the Needlers and the role I played. With the disruptions to Earth’s satellites following the EMP, I’m not sure how much information has already reached Luna 1, but make no mistake, I’m only telling you this because Dad made me promise. You see, Mother, despite everything you’ve done, he still believed in you, still believed you cared. And when you get down to it, I guess I loved him more than I hate you. So here you have it.

• • • •

I found out about the starships on a snowy Thanksgiving afternoon five years ago, a week before the rest of the world.

Katie had just turned twelve—yes, you have a granddaughter—and we’d been folding orange napkins while Dad shouted instructions from the kitchen. This was Katie’s first time helping her grandfather prepare the meal, so she was especially stoked.

“Grandpa swears my gravy is to die for.”

“I have no doubt,” I said. “You’ve obviously inherited the homemaking gene from your Grandpa.”

“It skips a generation!” Dad shouted from the kitchen. “Katie! Can you come in here? I need you.”

That’s when my phone beeped. I hesitated when I saw “Archie Melendez-NASA” flash on the screen. I’d been doing consulting work with Archie for about six months, ever since he’d read the article about me in Neuroscience. Archie wanted me for his study, and being out of work and cash-hungry at the time, the gig appealed to me. The downside? Archie had no respect for the work/home boundary.

“Ava here.”

“I have news.”

“Archie, can’t it wait until tomorrow? It’s Thanksgiving, for God’s sake.”

“Ariel BLV23 just did something very unusual.”

“Define ‘unusual.’” I’d been hearing about the comet for weeks from colleagues at work. The object had emerged from deep in the Oort Cloud and generated immediate attention because of its massive, elongated shape. Unusual for a comet, I’d been told.

“We’ve detected transmissions,” he said.

“What do you mean? What kind of transmissions?”

“A string of ascending and descending prime numbers. Accompanied by . . . symphonies, I guess you could call them. There’s no doubt, Ava. The signals are intelligent.”

“Holy shit.”

Dad entered the room carrying a turkey on a platter. He shot me a look.

“That isn’t even the half of it,” Archie said. “Its trajectory has shifted. It’s on course to intersect with Earth’s orbit.”

I managed to find my voice and asked about the object’s speed.

“At its current rate of deceleration, it’ll reach us in three years.”

“Jesus.”

“We need to coordinate our response to the transmission, prepare a press release. And our research with you becomes even more important now.”

Does it? I thought. I couldn’t see the connection.

Then it hit me: Archie wanted me to try to read the goddamned aliens. “Okay, I’ll be in first thing in the morning.”

“There’s already a car on its way to take you to JFK.”

“Tonight?”

“We’re all gathering at the Canberra Complex. NASA personnel, plus the ESA team. We need to get a jump on the Iranians and the Chinese.”

I suppose I could have told Archie we had years to figure this all out, that it was Thanksgiving and I needed to spend it with my family. But I was overwhelmed by the news, and flattered that Archie thought I could make some contribution. In three years the aliens in the needle-shaped ship—aliens!—would arrive and transform our world in ways we couldn’t even imagine. (It took us all of about three seconds, by the way, before we’d nicknamed them “Needlers.”)

I don’t remember how Dad reacted to the news. Everything after that single phone call blurs now into a jumble of fragmented memories. I remember Katie storming into her bedroom and slamming the door. I remember packing my bag. Saying goodbye. I must have said goodbye, right?

I just know I never got to try Katie’s gravy.

• • • •

The most contentiously debated topic was related to the nature of the Needler vessel. Was it an automated probe or a manned spaceship? The European team believed the vessel’s sub-light speeds made it unfeasible for biological beings to survive the interstellar distances—unless, that is, the Needlers had a hell of a long lifespan or advanced stasis technology. NASA scientists fell firmly in the Generation Ship camp; the massive ship, after all, could accommodate Beijing—with room to spare. Generations of space travelers could have lived and died on that vessel during the centuries-long passage between the stars.

That first year the traditional rivalries between ESA and NASA fell by the wayside. Negotiations resulted in the formation of a coalition of experts tasked with preparing for interaction with the aliens. As the wunderkind of space neuroscience, Archie made the cut. Everyone wondered what the effect of traveling through space—maybe for centuries—would be on alien physiology and psychology. Archie, of course, emphasized the difficulty of measuring those effects when we didn’t have a starting point from which to evaluate the aliens. But the consensus nonetheless was to include an array of experts who might give us the best shot at understanding the Needlers. That’s where Archie thought my skills might come in handy.

• • • •

The attention deficit disorder that made me prone to temper tantrums in public continued long after you left. Likewise, my aversion to human touch. I can imagine how difficult this must have made things for a young mother like you, dealing with a shrieking child who you couldn’t calm down, who you couldn’t touch without triggering another meltdown. This must have frustrated you to no end.

I remember spending most of my time with Dad or the nanny while you threw yourself into your work with EncelaCorp. At the time, of course, all I knew was that you were rarely around. An exception to this rule was on the sunny Saturday morning you drove me to Rockaway Beach. Do you remember? I wanted to do nothing but observe the yappy lapdogs being walked by their owners and especially an excited border collie that fetched a red Frisbee. Instead, you tried to force me to swim, and when I cried and fought you, you picked me up and rushed away from the shore. I couldn’t make you understand. I wound up throwing myself on the sand while you wrestled with me, shouted at me, until I bit your index finger.

That’s when you stormed off and left me alone, crying. In hindsight, I’m sure you didn’t go very far. You probably retreated behind the beach chair vendors to compose yourself. You wouldn’t have left a bawling, five-year-old by herself on a beach, right? Ten minutes later, after I’d finally calmed down, you returned and yanked me up off the sand. It’s a memory I can’t let go, even after all these years. You were angry—I understood that even then. But you’d come back for me.

• • • •

Communications with anyone outside of Canberra were restricted—and monitored. NASA/ESA couldn’t chance any information being leaked to their rivals in Tehran and Shanghai. Archie arranged to grant me access to the Net every three months so I could chat with Dad and Katie. At first, Katie participated despite the time difference.

“Mom, just come home,” she said. She’d put her hair into pigtails, which made her look 9 instead of 13 and twirled one of the braids around her finger.

“I can’t, Katie. Not yet. I’m involved with critical research here,” I said. “When the aliens arrive, they’re going to help us and teach us to grow as a species. They’re going to change our lives forever.”

“I don’t want our lives to change. I just want you to come home.”

“As soon as I can, I will. I promise.”

The last few calls, she’d been at sleepovers with friends, according to Dad, though I suspected otherwise.

The project demanded my complete attention. I spent my time in meetings where the team responsible for greeting protocols butted heads with military personnel who’d put together their own special “welcome” strategy. The team’s plan was to respond to the transmission with prime numbers and our own music, to let the aliens know we understood their messages. The military reps tried to put the kibosh on those plans. Best to maintain the element of surprise, they argued, whatever the hell that meant. In the end we’d persuaded them of the wisdom of sending the message by highlighting the potential risks of inaction. What if the Iranians established communications with the Needlers first?

The modulated message we transmitted used the same radio frequency as the Needler music. It consisted of a mix of classic and contemporary pieces, agreed upon after weeks of debate, to match the frenetic energy of the alien symphonies. We wanted to impress the Needlers—with Bach and Mozart, the Beatles and Chen Ts’ong, the Hard Knox and Nisa Ndogo. We wanted to show them humanity welcomed them and aspired to follow in their footsteps as grand cosmic explorers—something like that. That was the idea, anyway.

After transmission of the message, we shifted all of our attention to preparing for in-person contact.

• • • •

Let me ask you something. Did you know Dad hired a private investigator to find out if you were dead? That’s how we learned you’d relocated from EncelaCorp’s Nairobi office to the Luna 1 colony, that you’d remarried and had two children. Girls. Bright, oh-so-normal girls, I imagine.

Unlike me. How humiliating it must have been for you to have to walk around with your dumb, defective daughter. That’s why you fled after the initial misdiagnosis on my sixth birthday, isn’t it? That’s why you left it to Dad to deal with my behavioral therapy, to help me with my poor communication skills and clumsiness.

If you’d stayed you could have seen the dramatic progress I made over the next year, the improvement that caused the doctors to question their initial diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorder. You could have listened to the specialists who methodically ruled out various disorders on the autism spectrum (though they found me by no means neurotypical), before diagnosing me as acutely empathetic. Unlike most empathetic people, who understand and relate to the mental states of others based on subtle clues, expressions, body language, my abilities proved to be far more atypical.

For as long as I can remember, I found I was especially attuned to the feelings of animals. I could feel the discomfort of saddled horses whenever Dad took me to the dude ranch at the Catskills every summer. I could sense our pet beagle’s discomfort with the dark dampness of the backyard doghouse.

See what you missed, Mother? Oh, I know your supposed reasons for leaving us behind. Or at least the reasons you gave Dad. Excuse #1: Dad had had a one-night fling while you were pulling some crazy hours at work. You couldn’t forgive his infidelity. Excuse #2: You felt unfulfilled professionally. You couldn’t pass up the adventure of a lifetime, assisting with the engineering plans for the lunar colonies. Excuse #3 (the real reason): Me. You couldn’t cope with my condition.

Dad coped. I coped. I even found a way to use my gift to make a living, a good one. I designed lunar feedlots, factory farms, and slaughterhouses, making them more humane. And when I wearied of helping animals to die comfortably, I concentrated on helping them live comfortably. I assisted engineers with space transportation and holding systems to move animals in zero-g from Earth to Luna 1 and 2 without stressing them. I designed special holding pens for the Long Island Zoo, worked side by side with animal handlers, volunteered at kennels. After the cutbacks at the zoo, I lucked out when Archie read the piece published about my unusual skills with animals, and called for my assistance.

Before the Needlers arrived, Archie had me reading livestock that had spent months in space. With the detection of the alien vessel, however, the focus of my work changed. Archie cared less about the animals I could read than he did about me, about learning the extent of my abilities. To read the Needlers, he needed me to hone my skills and stretch them to their limit. That’s when he proposed enhancements.

Over the next few weeks I allowed medics to extract a swath of cells from my amygdala for analysis. I even let them inject nanites into my insular cortex along with chemicals designed to increase the production of neurotransmitters.

But as far as I could tell, all it did was make me crave pineapple and anchovies.

• • • •

Following the medical procedure, over the next twenty-four months at the Canberra Complex I practiced reading mice, tapeworms, finches, armadillos, peacocks, kangaroos, dolphins, great apes, parrots, piglets, lizards and a dozen different types of cats and dogs. My sensitivities became more pronounced. I’d spent the entire previous month just with honeybees, assessing different emotions as varying pheromones were introduced to the hive. I often couldn’t put into words the particular emotion I sensed. Invertebrates, for example, don’t feel sexual attraction the way a human does. It’s more like a compulsion, an overriding magnetic pull, more akin to getting swept downstream toward a waterfall.

From lizards I sensed what I can only describe as a wave of color, a dull gray. Only Komodo dragons, which were more active, could break through this gray—and only when they hunted; in those cases I identified feelings of excitement and hunger much like my own. The lizards’ other emotions simply didn’t translate.

On one occasion, I sat across from Bhargava, the biologist and anthropologist, and Fitzpatrick, the hybrid neurologist/psychologist/asshole while they conducted one of their many tests on me. Fitz didn’t pretend to hide his contempt for me—he viewed the whole exercise as a waste of time. I had to respect his honesty. Bhargava, on the other hand, seemed to have a genuine fondness for me. I couldn’t say why. When it came to interpreting human reactions and emotions, I was no different from any other person. Maybe if neurotypical humans were more honest with their emotions, I might have stood some chance of reading them accurately. But half the time their true emotions lay buried beneath the layers of lies they’d told themselves. Between all the conflicting feelings and self-repression, reading an animal’s emotions was a cakewalk by comparison. Looking back, I’m not sure how Archie expected me to read aliens when I couldn’t even read my own self-deluded species.

“What’s on the schedule today?” I said. “Please, no more insects.” Since insects were one of the most successful forms of animal life on Earth, Archie argued, the Needlers were more apt to skitter on six legs and wave their antennae at us than go for a jog and sit down for a latte.

We all worried that if the Needlers were insectoid, I might not be able to read them. With ants, I’d detected what I can only describe as a numb, neutral humming. Honeybees, on the other hand, projected certain rudimentary emotions: fear, contentment, shock.

“We’ve got a surprise for today,” Fitz said.

Whatever dumb animal they’d brought—I could sense it wasn’t a monkey or a dolphin or other advanced form of life—sat hidden inside an opaque container so I couldn’t see it.

Fitz took a piece of paper and lit it on fire. He dropped it into the container.

I expected to feel the panic of a skittering rat or chipmunk, but as I settled in and focused, I didn’t sense much initially. Whatever animal it was, it didn’t panic, at least not in any traditional way.

“An unawareness, almost,” I said. “Like an echo of a feeling that’s bigger, slower, struggling to catch up.”

After a few minutes, the reverberations intensified into a sharp, far-off sting that pierced my chest, then nothingness. “It’s dead,” I said. My hands trembled.

Fitz and Bhargava studied the results of my neural patterns in the scanner.

I stood up and staggered toward the door.

“Ava, what’s wrong?” Bhargava said.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.” My voice wavered.

I stumbled back to the table and lifted the divider. Inside the smoke-filled container lay the husk of a burnt shrub.

• • • •

The Canberra Complex had a makeshift bar in the lobby where project members gathered to shoot the shit over watered-down drinks.

“We need to grasp the Needlers’ intentions,” Archie said, sucking on an Amstel.

“I suspect we’ll figure that out the minute the Needlers fire their first weapon.”

“You don’t believe that.” Archie smiled.

He was right. In my heart of hearts I had no doubt the Needlers were coming to nurture us, to protect us and lift our species to the next unimaginable phase of development, whatever that might be.

Archie had a soft spot for me. I thought it might even be romantic in nature. So imagine my surprise when I heard the rumor he was already involved—with Fitzpatrick, no less. The furtive glances, the hand on the shoulder, quickly removed. In hindsight I guess it was pretty obvious. Archie should’ve known better than to be sleeping with one of his subordinates, especially a jerk like Fitz, but with the world’s future in doubt I figured I’d cut the guy some slack.

“It’s Katie’s birthday next week,” I said. “I need to see her.”

“I appreciate the sacrifices you’ve made, Ava, really I do. But if we were to make an exception for you, we’d have to lift the Information Wall for everyone else on the team. Did you know that Hernandez’s brother is getting married? That Atul’s son broke his leg skiing?”

I sipped my drink. Hearing about the travails of family members drove home the point that while we stayed holed up on this base, obsessing over the arrival of the Needlers, the world still went along its merry way.

“Archie, they’re all employees and officers,” I said. “I’m a civilian, a consultant. A consultant who’s only here because you asked.”

“Ava . . . ”

“Just a weekend, Arch.”

Silence.

I pulled my hair back, displaying the scar in my upper right temple where the medics had drilled into my skull.

Archie sighed and ran his hand over his mouth. “I’ll see what I can do. I may be able to get clearance to open up a vid chat ahead of schedule.”

“No, I’m leaving the base,” I said. “Two days. Give me two days with my daughter. I won’t say a word to her about the project. You can put a patch on me. Listen to every word I say.”

After a long silence Archie said, “The surgical enhancements have made a real difference. The tests show that your sensitivity is off the charts.” He hesitated. “What does it feel like? To be able to peer inside another creature. To know what they’re feeling . . . ”

“It’s more than just knowing what they feel. It’s feeling what they feel. Entering completely into another being’s world—and translating that experience into language. That’s the tricky part. Sometimes I can’t describe the feeling in words.”

He paused. “You can have your two days, but that’s it. Keep it to yourself. You’ll be patched. And the Information Wall has to be maintained. Understood?”

• • • •

Snow froze on the ground, not the white puffy variety but a grey, dirty inch-thick coating that made it difficult to take a step without risking a bad fall. It had been three years since I’d left, and when I strode to the entrance—Dad had painted it a sky-blue that made it unrecognizable—the front door flew open.

“Ava,” Dad said. He went to give me a hug and then caught himself when I flinched. Physical contact still made me uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He took my hands in his, squeezed them.

I set down my bag and shook the snow out of my jacket and mittens while Dad retreated into the kitchen. As I expected, he emerged a minute later with a mug of hot cider.

“Sit, sit, sit,” he said, pointing to the couch. “You can put your things away later.”

“Where’s Katie?”

“Out with friends,” he said, rolling his eyes in a way that I knew meant a longer conversation on the subject was inevitable.

We sat and he interrogated me about everything from the sleeping facilities at Canberra—I had my own spacious room, but shared a bathroom with a medic assigned to monitor me—to the more obscure policy considerations about contact with the Needlers, which I couldn’t discuss. Not with the patch I was wearing.

“What if the Needlers give us something of tremendous value? I don’t know . . . teleportation technology, cold fusion . . . Which country reaps those benefits?”

“Who do you think, Dad?” I said. “Our corporate sponsors in the good ol’ U.S. of A.—and maybe our loyal allies. Whether we decide to share that technology with anyone else though, who’s to say?”

“Got it,” he said, acknowledging the unspoken fact that it’s “finders keepers” in the game of alien debriefing. And if the Sino-Iranian crew were to beat us to the punch on any of that technology, the shoe would be on the other foot. We’d be flat out of luck.

An hour later while Dad salted the pot of whitefish stew, the front door rattled open and boots stomped on the welcome mat. I ran from the kitchen to the living room and when I saw Katie, I couldn’t believe it. She’d transformed from a scrawny, pigtailed girl into a teenager with bright, gray eyes—a feature that I guess she inherited from you, Mother. When I went to greet her, she held her hands up as if afraid that I’d hug her. “Mom,” she said in a flat voice, deeper than I remembered. She extended her hand and I shook it. When she removed her ski hat, her long blond hair fell to her shoulders, parted down the middle by a six-inch wide bald track.

“Katie!” Daddy said. “What did you do to you hair? And today of all days . . . ”

“So? I got it cut!” She said this in an exasperated manner that didn’t acknowledge the meaning of the distinctive hairdo, a style worn by the militant Isolationists.

I managed to find my voice. “Hey, the Isos have a sensible position.” Not that I agreed with it.

“Damn right we do,” Katie said.

“Language!” Daddy said

I’d heard it all before—as had most of the public, which had been subjected to transportation shutdowns, the firebombing of government offices, and other random protests. Contact with the aliens spelled certain doom for humanity. Interactions between advanced and “primitive” cultures had always resulted in the same outcome: destruction of the latter. A reasonable concern, I supposed, especially when compared to the complaints of the “Xeno-mystics,” who fervently believed the aliens were here to bring us a message about God. Or the Reincarnationists who thought the Needlers were dead people from human history returning home. Or the Protectors who actually encouraged armed conflict with the aliens as a serious—no, the only—viable option. Compared to the theories of these crackpots and religious zealots, Isolationism was an almost scholarly pursuit.

“I’d be an Iso myself,” I said, “except it’s too late in the game to do anything but prepare for contact. The Needlers are already on the way.”

“Well, you can stop trying to communicate with them,” Katie said. “Stop provoking them. Maybe they’d leave us alone if we weren’t sending them so many messages.”

“No, if there’s any hope,” I said, “it lies in understanding them, communicating with them, letting the Needlers know who we are, what’s unique about us, so they can teach us to better ourselves.” Saying it out loud made me believe it even more. The Needlers would extend a hand and help lift humanity up, I was sure of it. Intellectually, I understood that the most likely outcomes were dark and terrifying, but in my heart I didn’t believe the aliens would come all this way to harm us. Not intentionally. Traveling such vast distances to destroy a backwards species seemed like an expensive and pointless proposition. No, I was convinced the Needlers were coming to reveal something, something that would open the universe to us.

“You really think the Needlers care?” Katie said, rolling her eyes. “Have they responded to any of your messages over the past three years?”

I couldn’t answer her because of my patch, so I deflected. “Whether or not they’ve responded, it doesn’t mean we give up.”

“You know what?” Katie said. “If you’ve come all this way just to pick a fight with me, maybe you should just go back to your aliens.”

“Katie!” Dad said.

“Hey, I’m not here to fight with you,” I said. I pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and she swatted my hand away.

“I’m going out,” she announced to Dad.

“Katie, your mom’s only here for two days . . . ”

“Melinda’s throwing me a surprise birthday party tomorrow and I promised I’d help her get ready. I have to practice looking surprised.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Dad said. I hadn’t seen him this angry since the day I’d totaled the car as a teenager without wearing my seatbelt.

“Grandpa, you heard her,” Katie said. “She doesn’t mind.”

“Not a chance,” he said.

“Dad . . . really, it’s okay.” I didn’t want to be the needy mom who came home to dictate her daughter’s schedule.

Dad sighed so loudly it became a wheeze. He picked up his soup bowl and stomped into the kitchen.

Katie and I stared at each other for a full minute until she stood and headed upstairs.

Despite Dad’s scolding, she barely spoke a word that day, and avoided me at every turn until she left to her friend’s party. I saw so much of myself in her that my heart filled to bursting with equal parts love and guilt.

On Sunday morning a new coat of snow had fallen, dressing the trees in the white robes of meditative monks. Dad stood on the porch and kissed my hands.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to wake her?” he said.

“No, let her sleep.”

As the black limo pulled up to the driveway, I glanced up at the second floor window and spotted Katie peeking from behind the blinds. She darted backwards out of sight.

I got in, slammed the car door and stared up at the wobbling blinds.

Over a year later, a week before her High School graduation, Dad called Katie over during one of our vid chats. She stood there sullen and silent until I asked her what she was thinking on that day, what had I done to make her so angry with me. She shook her head in disbelief and said, “Why didn’t you ask me to skip the party?” She paused and ran her hand across her eyes for a second though I didn’t see anything like tears in those steely gray irises. “Why didn’t you care enough to ask me to stay?” And she got up and left.

• • • •

Three months after I returned to Canberra, Dad informed me during a vid chat of Katie’s new boyfriend. “She’s dating one of those long-haired neo-hippies. A Xeno-mystic. I don’t think she sees anything in him. It’s just her way of crying out for attention. Oh, she’d deny it, but she still wants—more than anything—for you to come back and be part of her life.”

“Dad, the Needler ship has accelerated . . . ”

“What was that? You cut out.”

The Information Wall had bleeped out my comment about the Needlers.

“Just that . . . things are getting crazy around here, that’s all. But it won’t be long until I’m home for good, I promise.”

• • • •

Six months later, the Needler ship entered orbit around Earth. It was during this chaotic time that Dad somehow managed to arrange another vid chat off-schedule—so I knew it had to be something serious.

“Is Katie okay?” I said.

That’s when he told me about his leukemia.

“I can’t take care of Katie any more,” he said. “She’s hurt and angry and at that awkward age where she won’t listen to what I have to say anymore. She needs her mother.”

“Oh, Daddy.”

“I haven’t told her. I don’t think she could handle it. You need to come home.”

“I can’t just pick up and leave. I’ll need a few days to wrap things up, but I’ll talk to Archie and make the arrangements.”

Those plans fell by the wayside the next day when the Needlers released two shuttlecraft into the atmosphere—each thirty stories high and identical in shape to the mothership. The U.S. military mistook the ships for missiles and gave the order to launch the nukes. But the Needlers released an EMP that knocked out our satellites, cutting off all communications and preventing coordination of the massive nuclear strike the military had planned as a fallback “if circumstances dictated the necessary defense of God’s beautiful blue world against the soulless alien hordes” blah-blah-blah. You’ve heard the spiel even on Luna 1, I’m sure. Worse, the EMP had caused damage that prevented air travel back to the States for several weeks.

One of the vessels landed on Mount Everest and the other in a park in Santiago, Chile. Archie arranged to transport the team by sea to a Chilean base established a quarter of a mile away from the cordoned-off Parque Bustamente. The ships sat there for months while we tried everything to communicate with them: prime numbers; music; artwork; photographs; video-stream; the text of the Bible (we owed the Red State politicians a few favors); chemical formulas; math theorems. Even an old-fashioned knock on the door of their spaceship.

The Needlers showed no interest.

• • • •

Dad occasionally sent messages updating me on his treatments, but he never asked me about coming home again. He sent me a link to live-feed video of Katie’s High School graduation. It tickled me to think that Katie would see my holo-image occupying a seat in the first row. I was sitting alone in my bedroom watching the ceremony when a fist pounded on my door.

“Ava!”

It was Fitzpatrick.

“What is it? I’m watching—”

“The ship doors have opened! They’re disembarking.”

“Holy shit!”

I raced down the hallway and out the front door and leapt into a Humvee with Fitz and Bhargava. We sped toward the park and in the three minutes that it took us to get there, a narrow aperture had appeared on the side of the vessel.

We flashed our credentials, pushed past the guards and made our way onto the field.

Two stick-shaped creatures stood on the grass. It took a few seconds for my eyes to make sense of the images. The aliens had no heads or eyes, no mouths; they looked like tall silver spikes with colorful indentations that resembled hieroglyphics circling their midsections. Dozens of delicate, spindly “arms” and “legs” of varying lengths spidered out of their torsos as they moved.

That’s when one of the officers guarding the cordoned-off park jumped a barricade on the other side of the field and stood in the Needlers’ path.

“What the hell?” I yelled.

The officer removed his helmet, revealing a bald track down the center of his head.

The other officers on the perimeter raised their guns. “Someone stop him!” a voice from the sidelines screamed.

“No!” I shouted. “The Needlers are in the line of fire.”

“We don’t need you!” the Isolationist said. “You don’t belong here!”

He drew a revolver from his holster and pulled the trigger. The weapon made a clicking noise, but failed to discharge. All around us, the same impotent clicking came from scores of guns targeting the Iso.

The Needlers edged forward: slow motion, fast forward, slow motion, fast forward. Using three thread-like “arms” with sharp pincers at the end, one of them lifted a quartz rock off the grass and cradled it against its metallic midsection. The Iso continued shouting, moving in the direction of the Needlers. I charged across the field and threw myself at his legs from behind, tackling him before he could touch them. As we lay entangled on the ground, he tried to kick free of my grasp. I looked up to see how the Needlers would react. With one of them still clutching the quartz rock, they skirted around us, apparently oblivious to our presence—slow motion, fast forward—and entered an opening on the side of the ship, which closed behind them.

Within seconds, the shuttlecraft lifted off, turning into a speck in the sky. The vessel on Mt. Everest, we would later learn, took off at the exact same time.

• • • •

I’m still trying to understand Dad’s last request. He asked me to do the decent thing. Is that what this message to you is about? Decency? I can’t help but think that he clung to the fantasy of some melodramatic mother-daughter reunion. He always said you’d come back. But I’ve lived my whole goddamned life without you. I sure as hell don’t need you around now.

Archie asked if I would stay in Chile to assist with forensic analyses conducted at the landing site. I told him I had my father’s funeral to attend, that I was flying home the next day—for good this time—more than five years after Archie’s Thanksgiving phone call. I hoped that Katie would find a way to let go of her anger. Dad had mentioned that she spent most of her time either VR clubbing with friends or with her nose buried in her astrobiology text. She still wouldn’t take my calls.

The debate still rages as to why the Needlers went away. Maybe it was our clumsy attempt to answer their initial transmission or our attempted nuclear strike or that dumb Iso shooting at them. Many people are convinced it’s something we did wrong.

There are those who think the Needlers will return, that these were scoutships and a fleet of alien vessels is on its way. But I’m going to confess something to you. Something I haven’t even told Archie.

When the Needlers took their little stroll in the park, I focused and used my empathic skills. I was confident that I would read a great benevolence, a desire to nurture us, to help humanity maximize its potential. I told the others that I’d drawn a total blank, that I sensed no emotion in them I could correlate to a human feeling. But that was a lie. Perhaps the biggest lie I ever told in my life.

The truth is, when I peered into the Needlers’ alien minds I did feel something, something familiar. I sensed an utter, cavernous indifference.

So here’s what I think—and it’s the way most people feel these days. The Needlers left because they finally figured out we weren’t worth their time. And they won’t be coming back. But that’s okay. We’ve been doing just fine without them. No, we won’t be seeing the Needlers again. And who the hell needs them?

©2016 by Mercurio D. Rivera. | Art © 2016 by Elizabeth Leggett.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mercurio D. Rivera is an attorney and compliance officer who lives in the Bronx in New York City. His short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and has appeared in markets such as Year’s Best SF 17, edited by Hartwell & Cramer, Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy, edited by Rich Horton, Asimov’s, Interzone, Nature, Black Static and elsewhere. His stories have been podcast at EscapePod and StarshipSofa and translated and republished in China, Poland and the Czech Republic. His tales “Longing for Langalana” and “Tethered” (about aliens biochemically attracted to human beings) have been taught in college courses in the United States and Venezuela. Tor.com called his collection Across the Event Horizon (NewCon Press 2013), “weird and wonderful” with “dizzying switchbacks.” His website is mercuriorivera.com

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The War of Heroes

Kameron Hurley | 8595 words

The Heroes left the man dying on the field, one of the thousands they pitched overboard from their silvery ships at the end of each battle with Yousra’s people. Yousra brought him home and had him castrated, to ensure he spread no contagion, and put him to work in the village. The Heroes’ men tended to eat little and work hard, and with so few people left in the village, his labor was welcome.

Plague had killed most of the village men when the Heroes first came. In those early days, Yousra’s people had welcomed the castoff men the Heroes dropped at the edge of every battlefield as some kind of tribute delivered from the sky. Now they recognized them for what they were: plague-ridden bags of pollution, another weapon of war, their seed meant to sour wombs and turn babies into monsters. But her people still needed the labor, so they castrated them and hauled them home regardless.

It was Yousra’s task to kill the children resulting from such rotten unions; the plague ran deep now, rewriting the map of each child, so even now, three generations after they understood the threat, their children were still rotten. The children Yousra killed were already rotten and gangrenous in the womb. Killing such monsters did not frighten her.

The Heroes did.

The Heroes’ man had big, bloodshot eyes set deep in a broad, flat face. Black blood clotted his cropped genitals. His wrists were rubbed raw. She saw bruises on his face and thighs, put there by his own people, no doubt, or perhaps some of hers, before she decided she wanted him. When she looked at him, she was reminded of her own dying men on the hill of battle, the ones who tried to fight the Heroes when their big ships came overhead. Those men, she could not save. She settled for this one. They were not so different, the Heroes’ men and hers. The Heroes may have come from some other star, but Yousra’s people, too, had been born from the sky.

She took the man inside her house. He flinched under her hands. No one had ever seen the Heroes without their big suits of armor, only their men, so she supposed it was possible that the Heroes, too, looked much like Yousra. But she had always suspected they resembled insects, like the hard shells of their suits. It had taken eight of Yousra’s people with machetes to overtake a Hero, once, but even when they did, the Heroes’ reinforcements beat them away from the body before they could peel away the scaly layers of their suits. Why they left their men behind now, when all knew they were diseased, was uncertain. Perhaps they simply wanted to get rid of them, and could not bear to kill them any more than Yousra could.

“You’re a wreck,” she told the man. He whimpered. She pushed open his eyelids to examine his eyes. Gray eyes, unremarkable. Like her people, he had a clear, vestigial eyelid on the inner corner of his eye. Useful for the relentless sandstorms that wracked this part of the world . . . useful for the day when their crops were finally blown away and her people were cast back into the desert from which they came.

Prophetic times. End times. She did not expect to be alive by the time the desert reclaimed them.

She fed him milk of poppy mixed with afterdrake for the pain, then cleaned him up as he drifted in and out of consciousness. It was a wonder he had not bled out. Most did. She had to pinch and dig to find his urethra. She inserted a hollow bamboo tube to keep it open while the wound healed.

He did not recover quickly, or well. Yousra bathed him each day with water and diluted tea tree oil. She kept his wounds packed in precious honey to combat infection and ward off fever. At night, she woke to his cries, and soothed him like a child. As she held him, it reminded her of her own childhood, when she would hush her brothers’ cries so they would not draw the scavengers. The man babbled in some unknown language. It sounded mushy, as if he were chewing a gob of sap, sticky and sweet. Every time they thought they understood the Heroes’ language, they sent them men who spoke differently.

A few weeks later, when the village priest and his brother entered into an agreement with the potter woman on the edge of the village to form a marriage, Yousra was called to organize and bless the wedding, and the bride, and her most-likely rotten womb. Why her people married anymore, she did not know. She would bless this girl now and kill her monsters in a few months. Round and round, as their numbers dwindled, and the Heroes came through, building shining cities of glass and amber where once there were sprawling towns.

The bride dressed in the white of a martyr. Yousra had the Heroes’ man bring her tools into the bridal tent. When Yousra was a child, weddings took months or years to plan. Now the time of engagement was a matter of weeks.

She called the Heroes’ man simply, “Boy,” and he answered to it. He could walk, after a fashion, and that was good, because she had no use for a broken man. She bore some affection for the boy—how could one not bear affection for one you nursed and comforted? But she had born affection for monsters, too, the ones that went bad days or weeks after birth.

And she had killed them just the same.

The bride, Chalifa, was lovely. Her mother was one of the first births Yousra had tended after her predecessor, the village headwoman and priest, had died in childbed.

Yousra had always hoped to be headwoman herself by the time Chalifa married, so the girl’s wedding night would belong to her. Instead, Yousra merely outfitted the bride and gave her blessing.

“Will it hurt?” Chalifa asked as Yousra placed a circle of holly above her brow.

“It’s a ritual unblocking,” Yousra said. “It will make your first coupling much easier.”

Chalifa took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean the unblocking of the womb. I meant. . . the birthing.”

“That’s some time away,” Yousra said carefully.

“If it’s . . . If it’s gone bad . . . I don’t have to see it, do I?”

“No,” Yousra said.

“You’ll kill it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Yousra opened her mouth to tell Chalifa what a fine choice she had made, what fine children she would have—the same speech she had given a hundred doomed women—but as she did, a dull, vibrating hum stilled her speech. The holly leaves on Chalifa’s head trembled.

Yousra looked to the entrance to the bridal tent. The Heroes’ man had paused also, water bulb in hand. The fine hairs on his arms and neck stood on end.

The hum grew to a tinny whine. It was like nothing Yousra had ever heard. She felt the air tremble. Heard a heavy whump-whump, far off.

Yousra gazed outside the bridal tent. Something silver streaked across the lavender sky, like a giant thrush. The other villagers had come out of their tents. They, too, looked up—rapt, open faces gazing skyward.

“What is it?” Chalifa asked.

The world went dark.

• • • •

Smoke. Heat.

Yousra flailed in the darkness, pinned by the cloying weight of what must have been the bridal tent. She clawed for daylight. The air was bad. She gasped. Then screamed. Screamed and screamed and clawed at the tent, ripping and tearing at the hemp cloth. It wasn’t until the hilt of her machete knocked her hip that she realized she still carried it.

She pulled out the machete and sliced open the shroud of the bridal tent. Smoky air rushed in.

Yousra stumbled out. A low fog of blue smoke obscured her view. She heard muted screams. One ended abruptly. Loose clods of dirt blanketed the far side of the bridal tent. The remains of another tent poked up from a heap of shattered earth.

The rest of the village . . . she saw only hazy snapshots amid the smoke-fog . . . Curls of flame. Dark, bulbous shapes. Clumps of dirty meat. Smears of clotted blood and offal.

She stepped away from the ruins of the tent and lost her feet. She tumbled to the bottom of a deep crater. It stank of wet earth and copper and something else . . . sulfur? She clawed her way up the side of the crater.

A low rumble sounded overhead. Something blotted out the suns. She looked up and saw a slow-moving, silvery ship. Even in her terror, she gaped. She had never seen one of the Heroes’ ships up close. She saw her own reflection, distorted, gaping back at her from the impossibly shiny craft.

Yousra ran back toward the bridal tent. She called, softly, for Chalifa. She hacked at the tent, but found nothing. Half the tent was buried in the soil thrown up from the crater.

Voices sounded, close. Then other sounds, unfamiliar. Clicking. A soft buzz. Footsteps across the earth. Not sandaled feet, no, but boots. Metal. The crisp creak, whine, and hum of something Other.

Yousra hid in the crater, and peered above its edge.

Shapes appeared from the smoke—blocky, gargantuan. She had never seen a Hero, not like this. These were massive, twice as tall as the tallest man she knew, as wide as she was tall, encased in blackish-green material with the glossy sheen of a damp leaf. The pieces of their armor came together at the seams, moved like scales. The heads were mounted with a single horn, from which protruded a long mane of hair. In her mother’s time, they’d thought the Heroes were shelled creatures, bestial. It was a decade before they knew that the hard shells protected a soft interior.

As Yousra watched them approach, she had a sudden, intense desire to cut each of them open, to discover—for herself—the truth of that soft inner core and how it had polluted her people.

Someone cried out behind her. She froze.

A figure broke away from the smoke near the ruined bridal tent and ran toward the Heroes. It took Yousra a moment to recognize the castrated Heroes’ man. Had they come for him? Why? Curse me for a fool, she thought.

The boy babbled something at the Heroes in his mushy language. He prostrated himself and sobbed. Great, heaving sobs.

A strange sound came from one of the Heroes in turn. A chuck-chuck-guffaw sound that Yousra realized was laughter. The Hero struck the boy across the face with such force that it propelled him across the dirt and into the smoking heap of another tent.

The Heroes continued their chuck-chucking and walked on.

Yousra slid further below the lip of the crater. Squeezed her eyes shut. She heard the Heroes, not a dozen feet distant, crunching across the ruined earth. They spoke in tinny, garbled voices. She listened as they walked past her . . . and away.

She stayed huddled in the dirt until long after she saw their silvery ship shoot back across the sky over the village.

By then, dusk had settled across the world, and the massive glowing orb of the trade moon had begun to fill the sky, like a chalky skull writ large. As it rose, its pale glow chased away the dusk, blanketing the world in a harsh moonlight that was strong enough to hunt by.

Slowly, carefully, Yousra crawled from her hiding place and crept across the dirt. A little ways distant, she saw the still form of the Heroes’ man, crumpled in the dirt. She hesitated.

“Boy?” she called softly.

He did not move.

“Boy? Heroes’ boy?”

He lifted his head. His eyes were watery, bloodshot. The entire right side of his face was a black bruise.

“Come with me,” she said. “We aren’t safe here.”

He pressed his face back into the dirt.

Yousra gazed out beyond him to where the thorn fence has been. It was broken now. Bloody, tattered strips of it lay in wrecked clumps and tangles for a hundred yards in either direction. The fence would let in the contagion all around them. Even if she could bring herself to stay in the village, the horror of the contaminated world outside would overtake her. She was dead already.

Yousra watched the great God’s Wheel rise in the sky, the incredible patina of stars—gold, silver, blue, green—that lent pinpricks of jewel-like color to moon’s white glow during the dry season. It was full dark, and the God’s Wheel had risen above the tops of the walking trees.

The sky was oblivious to her troubles. The sky moved on. She should too. She went back toward the heart of the village. Something cried out behind her. She gripped her machete. Her fingers were slick. She dared look in the direction of the sound. Saw the familiar outline of the Heroes’ man. He struggled toward her, clutching at his side. As he neared, she saw that though he was injured, he was not bleeding.

“Are you pleased with what your heroes did?” she said. A hot surge of anger filled her. She raised the machete.

He cowered.

She stared long at his bruises.

“You,” she said softly, and lowered the machete. She pointed out past the thorn fence, in the direction the Heroes’ craft had gone. “You know where they are, don’t you?” His expression did not change. She jabbed her finger at him. “There was a river that used to flow through our village to another, many years ago.”

Her village hadn’t heard from anyone outside the thorn fence in decades.

“Heroes,” she said, and pointed again.

His eyes widened. That word, he knew.

“Take me to the Heroes,” she said.

He seemed to weigh his options in the chill glow of the tiny moon. His stare met the hilt of her machete. Then, a small nod. Barely perceptible. He began walking out past the ruined fence, toward a twisted tree.

“Wait!” she called. “Wait!”

She pillaged the remains of the village and found water bulbs, red flour, rain clothes, and a torn knapsack.

Yousra shouldered the pack and started off after the Heroes’ man. How long until she succumbed to some contagion out here? Until some insect or blight or fungus ate her from the inside? But how many Heroes could she take with her, before the end?

She raised her head and saw that the Heroes’ man had paused at the base of the twisted tree that once marked her family’s farm. Her heart ached. Not for him, or the lost farm, or her dead people, but for the hope of some uncertain future, something that wasn’t already written.

Yousra stepped forward, like hurling herself into some nameless void, and started across the contaminated world to meet him . . . and his heroes.

• • • •

“There is nothing out here but desert,” Yousra said, but the Heroes’ man kept walking. He ate and drank less than she did, and that was a boon, because as the long days stretched out, Yousra found that she needed more and more of both.

Their first night in the desert, she had come down with some contagion. It bloomed amber-white in her mouth like a fungus. She thought herself dead right then, but the Heroes’ man breathed into her mouth—she was too weak to argue—and the next morning the pain was less and the moldy fuzz in her mouth was gone.

Still, the man walked, and he said nothing. He had already tried and failed to go back to his people, so what did he expect to find way out here that would help him? All of her people’s settlements out this way were gone.

The world spun into light and darkness another dozen times before Yousra finally smelled something salty and full of death, a scent she had heard of but never seen. They followed a long abandoned track through the desert, passing the ruins of what must have once been cities, but cities the likes of which Yousra had heard of only in mythic tales. Staggering juggernauts stair-stepped into the sky, or spiraled up from the sand in great corroded circles. Bits of shattered glass and rotten metal lay scattered across the way. She could make out the softer valleys of the roads, and elevated walkways with crumbling arches.

And there, at the far end of the broken city, was a flat, shimmering plain of water, dark as a stormy sky. She had never seen a body of water so great. It stretched across the whole of the horizon. She could not see the other shore. It made a great roaring noise.

The Heroes’ man picked up his pace when he saw it, and she had to slog to catch up. By the time she reached him, he was already at the shoreline, his toes sunk into a battered beach made up of tiny fragments. Yousra scooped up a handful of the stuff and saw that it was made of shells, rocks, knobs of metal, and other, stranger kinds of materials, like ivory or obsidian, but softer. Many of the shapes were knotted and irregular. Far off, she saw great iron spires jutting out of the water; waves crashed against stone and metal structures, and something else—great shimmering fins, like the hulking back of some great monster. She gazed across the water and saw more and more structures breaking the waves around them.

“Did the Heroes do this?” Yousra asked. “Did they sink this city? Is this our city or theirs?”

He did not answer. Instead, he waded into the water and went kicking out into it like he was made for the water.

Yousra walked up onto a weathered pillar and watched him swim out toward one of the great fins. Was this his plan all along? Some death rite where he drowned himself?

She looked behind her, into the wretched city, and back in the direction of her own ruined settlement. Her feet were beginning to itch already, probably with some terrible contagion. If she stayed here alone, she was likely to die here as surely as she would have died in the settlement.

Better to die in the water, then.

Yousra jumped off the pillar and swam out into the sea after the Heroes’ man. The water was so clear she could see the ruins below her. They were not buildings, she saw now, but vehicles. She was not a good swimmer, but the day was clear and the current was not too strong. When she needed to rest, she clung to the big fin of some wreck and caught her breath. The wrecks below her were ships very much like those the Heroes piloted to every battlefield, only they were not silvery pods, but black, tentacled things with great soaring fins and rotten, fleshy-looking hulls.

When she reached the Heroes’ man, he was standing on top of the largest vehicle. The water washed over his feet, coming as high as his ankles. He got onto his hands and knees and pressed his palms to the surface of the ship.

Yousra dragged herself up next to him just as the skin around his hands puckered and pushed outward. He stepped back, bumping into her, and she caught him against her so he didn’t fall over. He was warm and trembling, and did not pull away as the flesh of the outer hull pushed outward and opened up above the surface of the water.

He finally left her arms and descended into the ship. Its surface changed, conforming to his feet and hands, making perfect holds for him.

Yousra followed, fearful it would only respond to him, but it conformed to her body, too, and as her head sank below the lip of the wound, it sealed behind her. For a heart-pounding moment she feared she had been eaten, left to suffocate in the darkness. But as the Heroes’ man walked ahead of her, the corridors lit up with green, bioluminescent flora. She marveled at the walls, and ran her hands along them. The man led her into the belly of the thing; a great round room. It was featureless save for a bulbous dais at the center of it.

“You know how to work this ship?” Yousra asked.

The man said nothing. He walked slowly around the room.

Yousra said, “Can you power it? We could fight them. We could destroy them, with this. Are these theirs? Can you use them? I know you understand more than you can speak.”

The Heroes’ man did not look at her. His shoulders tensed, though. She gently stroked his arm. “They did this to you,” she said. “They polluted you, then threw you away to your fate. You are as much their victim as we are. Help us beat them back and reclaim the world.”

He said something in his Heroes’ language. Stopped. Tried again, in hers, “World is large.”

“It is,” Yousra said. She thought of all the grotesque, rotting babies she had killed, the women gone to rot, the men gone to madness. “But if you can pilot these ships, we can teach others. We can make our own army, large enough to take back the world.”

Yousra didn’t know if that was true. She didn’t know the extent of the Heroes’ armies. They came from the sky, and the world was large. There could be thousands, hundreds of thousands, of them. More than that? She could not imagine numbers so large. But whatever the number, she would fight them. She would kill them as she killed the rotting, monstrous children they infected her people with.

He made a little whimpering sound. She opened her arms to him, and he pressed himself against her like a child. And perhaps he was; they all were, fearful children stunted by this mad war that neither understood. What did the Heroes want? She found, more and more, that she didn’t care so much about answers as revenge. She closed her eyes and thought of her smoking village, the scattered body parts, the huffing laughter of the Heroes.

“Come with me,” Yousra murmured in his ear.

He raised his face to her. His eyes were wet. She kissed him, softly, as she would kiss a sister or a child. Yet when he pressed back, his need was evident. His body was hot against hers, and she responded in kind, surprised at her own desire. She pinned him to the floor of the ship and nipped at his neck, and straddled his wiry thigh. When her leg rubbed between his where his sex had been, he cried out, and pushed her away.

Yousra tumbled off him, sat hard on her rump, and came back into the world. Desire was a drug, a potent one, and it muddled all sense. It had been so long since it had carried her away that she felt drunk and disoriented now; it was like drinking a pot of liquor after a year of nothing but brackish water. Warm, delirious.

The man sat up beside her. He was breathing heavily. He did not look at her, but stared straight ahead, hands wrapped around his knees.

“What do they want, your Heroes?” Yousra asked. She reached for him, gently, and stroked his jaw. He flinched, but did not pull away. The skin there was fuzzy. He was too young for a proper beard, or perhaps his kind did not grow them as well as hers. Perhaps all their men were this hairless. She wondered, for the first time, if the Heroes’ men left on the field were lost children, like the monsters she murdered out by the thorn fence.

He took her wrist, not ungently. “No knowledge,” he said.

“They tell you nothing?”

His lips firmed. Not a frown, not quite. He touched his temple. “No knowledge,” he said.

“You must remember something,” she said. “You yelled at those Heroes. In the village. What did you tell them?”

He stood and walked over to the dais at the center of the room. He placed his hands in the middle of it, and the room became translucent.

Yousra gasped and scrambled up. The ocean surrounded them, full of derelicts and grimy whorls of rusty filth. It was only now, with a clear view of the ocean, that she realized there was nothing living here in the sea, either. It was as dead as the rest of the world.

The Hero’s man stepped up onto the dais. He pointed at Yousra, said, “Yours,” and then a fine mist of fleshy webbing descended from the ceiling and enveloped him.

Yousra shrieked and fell back against the transparent wall. She had a moment of vertigo, her mind fearing she would be cast out to sea, but the wall held. The webbing fully enveloped the Heroes’ man, rooting him into place like another fixture of the ship. But as it did, the ship itself came alive around her. The translucent walls flickered with blue and yellow lights. The ship shuddered; great gouts of the disturbed sea bottom clouded the water all around them.

Yousra climbed toward the dais. She touched the outline of the man’s foot, now covered by the ship’s flesh. The ship lurched again, and she stumbled back. The ship rose from the bottom of the sea, up and up and up. As it did, the motion of it stabilized, and Yousra walked closer to the transparent wall and gaped as the ship parted the waves and came up over the sea of dead.

She gazed back at the Heroes’ man, and the great dead village behind them. Why had the Heroes abandoned the ships here, if they could pilot them as easily as this man? Surely he was piloting it in some way. It seemed a terrible waste to leave all of this here.

The walls shimmered, then went opaque. The darkness was abrupt. Yousra feared they would fall out of the sky. Then, blinding white light. She raised her hands to her face. When the light dimmed, she pulled her hands away, and saw that the city below them had been transformed. Now it was a bustling metropolis with great tangled buildings grasping toward the sky. Massive floating bridges moved over the ocean. Ships like the one she road in traversed the air all around them. She thought herself mad until she noted the position of the God’s Wheel in the sky. It was in the wrong position. She was not looking at a current vision, but a past one. Somehow the ship had captured it; perhaps the ship was a living thing, and had remembered. Was the Heroes’ man tapping into that memory?

As she watched, a great rain of fire came down from the sky and destroyed the peaceful city. The bridges exploded. The ships turned and fought while the city burned. And then came the Heroes’ ships, the familiar shiny silver arrows.

The Heroes decimated the people. The ships that were being attacked fled to the water, seeking reprieve. Most were destroyed.

Then blackness. When light returned, the walls were again translucent, and the city was old and dead again, and the God’s Wheel was in its proper place.

Yousra felt a terrible fist of dread in her stomach. She turned back to the Heroes’ man, suspended now, merged with the ship.

“You’re not one of the Heroes,” she said. “You’re one of these people. Some other people they destroyed, like us.” Of course the Heroes had not piloted these ships; only people from this city could pilot them, the way the Heroes’ man was doing now. What a fearful, sick game the Heroes played, sending their own captives to Yousra’s people. What did they expect to happen? They knew Yousra’s people would torture them, murder them. She felt foolish, then. Why would the Heroes infect their own men and condemn them to such a fate? No wonder the man looked so much like her people. They were not so different, just separated by time.

What baffled her was that the city below had very clearly been dead for centuries. And though Yousra’s people had been known to live for a century and a half, this man was clearly very young. Where had he come from? What had the Heroes done, to keep him so young? And why throw him out now?

Yousra pressed her hand to his form again. “If there are more of your people, we can find them,” she said. “They can pilot the ships. We can seek revenge, together.”

The ship was hovering above the ocean now, motionless. The suns were lowering on the horizon. Yousra waited. What did she have to offer him? He had a ship, and a world that had been dead for longer than he had been alive. What must he have thought, awaking to find himself dumped in her village and castrated?

But she firmed her resolve. “I’m not your enemy,” she said. “The Heroes did this to us both. They pitted us against one another. They will not expect us to work together.”

Yousra considered the flesh of the ship. Clearly these were organic things, and she knew how to heal, and birth, and kill, if necessary. “If these ships are alive,” she said, “they could be changed. Transformed. Perhaps we don’t need to find your people to pilot each one. Perhaps there is a way to link them, and feed them.”

The ship began to move.

Yousra turned to watch as it sailed over the ocean, back toward the city. It settled down in a great dead patch of ground opposite the road, close enough to the sea that the waves lapped at its sides.

“Are you with me, or do you want me to get out?” she said.

The walls lit up again, and replayed the death of the city.

“All right,” she said. “This may take some time.”

And so began Yousra’s life at the edge of the sea. She had spent so long engaged in the act of death that she had almost forgotten what it was like to birth something. It did not take long to realize that the key to unlocking the ships was the blood of the Heroes’ man. Now that she knew he was not one of them, though, she tried to think up another name for him. Boy, Ship, Man, Child . . . Easy names. The names of things. But she could not get them to stick in her mind.

She bled him in the morning, cutting through the webbing the ship had wound about him and carrying it in one of the old water bulbs. Then she would swim down to another of the derelict ships, and pour the blood onto the dais at the center of each, and watch the webbing come down and devour it. The ships woke; lights rippled across their surfaces. Their skins shone. But she could not figure out how to link them. Could the Heroes’ man pilot them all, now that they were away? Could she connect them together, through some kind of umbilical system?

The ships themselves were very much like children. Abused, neglected children buried at the bottom of the sea. She began to learn their fits and starts, their needs and wants. It was why she could not bear to sleep inside the ship where the Heroes’ man stood trapped, because it was clear he had become the ship. Each day she bled him, there was less blood. The outline of his form in the webbing grew smaller and more twisted and disfigured each day. The ship was eating him, devouring him. She hoped some part of his consciousness would go on, but she feared that the ship would simply require more bodies, more death, to power itself.

“I will give you death,” she whispered to her ship one night while the God’s Wheel whirled in the sky. The skin of the ship seemed to murmur beneath her fingers. She took comfort in that. “Will you help me, in exchange for bodies?” she asked. Another ripple. The skin of the ship warmed beneath her fingers.

She slept well that night.

It was months into her life on the beach, bleeding and waking hundreds of ships, that she found the sepulcher. She was scavenging for food in the city, hunting rodents and beetles. Much of her diet was fried grasshoppers and withered tubers. Her gums bled now, and the vision in her right eye was not the best. Two lumps had formed on her ankle, and another on her wrist. She had lacerated the one on her wrist, and it had oozed thick, gummy fluid. Not cancer, then. Perhaps. But it would come for her, out here in the toxic world beyond her village.

She found a rodent’s burrow, and dug into the rubble around it to try and ferret it out. Her stick hit a spongy spot, and poked right through it without resistance. She cleared away the debris and found that the metal over the spongy surface had rotted away. Beneath the metal was a scabby substance, clotted. She dug through it and peered into a great black space. When she pushed her head through, the space lit up with green, bioluminescent organisms. It was a vast space, far larger than she had anticipated. It went on and on.

Yousra slipped down into the cavern. All along the walls, on both sides, ran coffin-like indentations in the fleshy corridors. Inside were bodies, row after row of bodies, their faces serene, their flesh—

Yousra touched one of them. Its flesh was cool, but still pliable.

Bodies. Like a gift from the gods.

Yousra did not think about why they were there, or how to wake them, or how long they had hidden here while their city was destroyed. No, she focused on her goal. She made a sledge and hauled them—one after another—across the dead city and into the sea and into the ships that littered the ocean bottom.

She went to bed smelling of the sea. Tasting it on her lips. Sometimes she thought about the lives the bodies must have had before she had found them, but mostly she thought of her village, and the babies.

The twenty-eighth body she pulled through the ocean and deposited on the dais of a ship woke up.

Yousra saw the eyelids flicker. He began to cough. His skin warmed. She patted the dais and yelled at the ship, willing the webbing to come down faster.

As the webbing crept up over the man’s feet, he began screaming and screaming, babbling at her in some language. She recognized it. The same one the Heroes’ man had used. She did not look away, but met his gaze until the ship wrapped him in its fleshy embrace.

Then she patted the cocooned man and murmured, “You belong to me now, ship. Follow me, and I will keep you fed.”

When she ran out of bodies, she went back to her own ship, and found that the dais that had once contained the Hero’s man had grown upward to touch the ceiling. His body was gone, absorbed, but the ship had built something in its place. When Yousra pressed the pillar now, the ship shuddered under her touch.

“Let’s find some Heroes,” she said, and the ship rose from the beach.

Yousra stood in front of the pillar, back pressed against it, and pointed to the horizon. “They come from the sky,” she said, “this way,” and the ship moved the way she pointed.

The ship moved across the sea, so fast that they reached the other side in just a few breaths. It slowed as they reached land. Yousra saw a glimmer of silver below, and just as she thought to tell the ship to get closer to it, the ship sank toward the glinting metal.

The metal was not a large ship, not like the ones that had moved over Yousra’s village and destroyed it. It was much smaller, with room for perhaps just a handful of people. Two Heroes stood just to the left of the vehicle, inspecting a tall mound scattered with the detritus of living that a family would leave behind when they fled quickly.

“Destroy their ship,” Yousra said.

The ship around her hummed. Yellow lightning crackled across the surface outside. Then a brilliant flash.

When Yousra could see again there was a great crater where the Heroes’ ship has been. She told her ship to land, and it did, and she walked out to see what she had done.

The air outside smelled like stone after a hard rain. The fine hairs stood up on the back of her neck. The Heroes’ ship had been liquefied, its parts melted down and splattered across the crater. The bodies of the Heroes lay thirty paces away. Their bodies had collided with large trees, and shattered their trunks to pieces.

Yousra made her way to the bodies, her bare feet making prints in the loose soil, and stood over them. One had been run through with a great tree branch with such force that it severed through the suit. The other had lost its head; bits of ship debris had blown clear of the crater and cut the head neatly from the body.

Yousra found the great helmet and picked it up. A head rolled out and settled at her feet. She crouched beside it and turned it over so she could see its face. Blood and bruising mottled the features, but it was not some alien, chitinous thing, as she had suspected. Yousra sat beside the body and pulled the gory head into her lap. She rubbed the brow and fingered the braided hair and wondered how a people so like hers could do what these Heroes had done. She had thought them monsters from some other star, but the face in her lap was not so different from the man who had sacrificed himself to power the ship, not so different from hers.

She gazed up into the sky at the God’s Wheel, still faint now in the daylight. She imagined a whole people who had gone up there and come back here to see what had become of their ancestors, only to destroy them for being too weak, too tied to the soil and the seasons. What they wanted did not concern her, but she mourned the fact that they were able to do what she was about to do, and that what she was about to do was only what she had learned from them.

Yousra set the head beside her and picked up the helmet. It fit her head easily. Instead of tunneling her vision, it gave her a full, enhanced view of her surroundings. Like the ship she rode in, it was transparent here inside of it, so every way she turned, she could see the world, only augmented with symbols and shapes and mists that appeared otherwise invisible. Perhaps these suits detected heat or gases and gave them form. She did not know, but she could learn, the same way she had learned the ships.

Yousra had her suit. She had her army. She was ready.

• • • •

It took a long time to burn down the world.

Yousra would not have thought it would take so long, with so much of it destroyed already, but there was far more of the world than she was prepared for. The Heroes inhabited great swaths of it. Her living army of ships was two hundred strong, and they rose from the sea at her command and destroyed at her word. There may have been a large armada of Heroes’ ships when they first came to Yousra’s lands and the lands of the man whose people had made the cities. But there was no longer an armada of ships that strong here. What the Heroes had left to mop up what remained of the people here was small in comparison to what Yousra had seen in the vision the ship showed her.

Her army of ships blew their silver vehicles out of the sky, rained molten metal and torn, suited bodies across the world. She traveled over great barren spaces, inhabited by nothing but rocks and dead, rolling weeds. The remnants of thorn fences made for abstract art pieces, scattered and broken across the lands at the edge of the worst of the blight. She found a large fleet of silver ships—thirty, in total—camped at the base of a craggy mountain range, and rained lightning-fire down upon them until the bases of the mountains were coated in molten silver.

As she watched smoke rise up from the dead forests surrounding the camp, she wondered why the Heroes had not destroyed them as she was doing. Perhaps, after decimating the man’s people, hers were not considered a threat. And why would they be? They had no ships, no cities. Just death and disease. No, the Heroes had done something more terrible to them. They had toyed with them, as if they were nothing but insects or rodents. Murdering Yousra’s people would have been too easy. The game was in watching them slowly suffer and die.

Her murdering went on for some time, until she dreamed of steaming craters and molten silver, and woke to see the same. Her ships were taken down one by one, a battle at a time. It did not alarm her, though, because this was the end she expected. This was a war of attrition.

She had just three ships left when she approached the last of the Heroes’ settlements. She had to assume it was the last, because she had traveled across the world for days and days and seen nothing but death and ruin and rot. The cancer in her left leg had gotten worse; her ankle had swelled up so big that she walked with a painful limp. A lump in her neck was the size of her fist now, and it pressed against her windpipe as she breathed. She was not long for this world; she was poisoned. This was likely her last camp.

She commanded the ships to fire, but as they did, four silvery Heroes’ ships emerged from the muddy lake bottom. They fired on her ships, downing two. Her ship screamed into defensive maneuvers and fired at them, speeding in and out of range on its own, powered by the will of the man it had eaten. The Heroes’ ships exploded, but the wreckage cloud was so vast that it clipped her ship, and suddenly she was hurtling down and down, and she hoped this would be her death, a fitting death, ground into the mud with her ship.

• • • •

Smoke. Heat.

Yousra crawled up through the suffocating flesh of the ship, tearing her way out, sucking for air. Her skin ached and burned and she feared the ship was eating her to save itself.

She popped free of the ship and slid down its surface and into the long poppies in the field. She wore her Heroes’ suit, but not the helmet; it had been wrenched free in the accident.

Yousra pulled off her gloves, as well, because she felt too hot. Behind her, the ship that had led her glorious army burned hot and white. She shielded her eyes and limped away, sucking heated air and smoke.

When she reached the tree line, she pulled off the rest of the suit and cast it into the poppies. It was strange to see something alive, out here, but she had reached the very end of the world, the end of everything. She leaned over and tried to smell the poppies, but her nose didn’t register any scent. She rubbed her smoke-stung eyes. Something moved at her left.

When she turned she saw it was a Hero, her own armor battered and smashed as Yousra’s. The Hero, too, had removed her helmet and gloves. She was a young woman, half Yousra’s age, hair braided back from a lean face that reminded Yousra of Chalifa, the bride from her own village.

Yousra cast about for a weapon, but saw nothing. The Hero had none either that she could see, but would be trained in war, and the only war Yousra knew was fought from inside a ship.

“You deserved all of this,” Yousra said.

She didn’t expect a response, but the Hero said, “It was necessary.”

“Necessary to who?” Yousra said. The Hero spoke with an accent, but not a thick one. They knew her language, at least. Probably that man’s, too, though. It meant nothing. They would kill anything. Knowing her language made them better killers, in fact. “You murdered my people. You murdered the world. What do you have to say to that?”

“We were civilizing you,” the Hero said.

“This?” Yousra said, gesturing to the steaming craters, the dead ships, the dying poppies. “This is civilization?”

“There can be no civilization without war,” the Hero said.

“You are a twisted, corrupt people,” Yousra said. “You have no idea what living is.”

“We had to break your villages,” the Hero said. “Wreck your world. Or you would not walk into the light. You would never explore the stars. You would never come after us.”

“You’re mad,” Yousra said.

“This is what happened to us,” the Hero said. “A people from another star rained fire on us, and lifted us up. We had to lift up another.”

Yousra thought she should feel something. Like the Hero had torn some piece of her. But as Yousra stood before her, barefoot, bloodied, her hair a matted tangle and what was left of her robe a tattered ruin, she realized they had nothing else left to break. It had all been done.

“You wish to break me?” the Hero asked softly. “As you have been broken? I am sorry, dear one, but you are not the first we have civilized. Nor will you be the last. Soon we will rise again, and take another star. An alliance of Heroes the like of which the universe has never known.”

“Heroes . . .” Yousra said.

“Yes, Heroes. It’s fitting, isn’t it? What your kind call us.”

“You don’t know what the word means,” Yousra said.

“It translates very well into our language,” the Hero said. “A Hero is one who not only slays monsters, but creates monsters to slay. That is what we have done here. It’s what you have become. A Hero. Now you, in turn, will make Heroes of others.”

“What if I kill you here?” Yousra said.

The Hero shrugged. “All the better.” She dropped to her knees. “Do it. Complete our mission here. Continue the cycle. Raise up another. Colonize the stars.”

“No,” Yousra said.

“Then we will find another,” the Hero said. “Do you understand yet? You sacrificed a boy to your cause. Murdered babies born wrong. Left men to die outside your fence. And my people, yes, we are people, though we are ruthless, you destroyed us with as much care as if we were insects. This is who you must be, to rule the universe.”

Yousra sat across from the Hero. “I don’t want to rule the universe,” she said. “I want two husbands, eight children, and a village full of friends. You took that from me.”

The Hero leaned toward her. “Take it back.”

“That’s what you don’t understand,” Yousra said. “I am too old to believe it can be returned to me. There is no substitute for my life. You are young, you don’t know that yet. But you will. You should have chosen a younger woman.”

Yousra got painfully to her feet. Her ankle throbbed. She began to walk toward the lake.

“Wait!” the Hero said. “We can cure you. Give you resources. We can give you a whole army. As many husbands as you desire. Have children, surround yourself with a new family. Your people have passed the test of personhood. You are civilized! You can be uplifted now! You are true people, and as true people, we invite you to join our federation of worlds.”

But Yousra was already at the end of the lake. She kept walking. The water brushed her ankles, cool and calming after all that heat and death. She gazed up at the God’s Wheel in the sky, brighter now as the light withdrew from the heavens.

The Hero was right, in that there was nothing she had not sacrificed to get here. But now, at the edge of the lake, under the eye of God’s Wheel, she found that after all this time, she did not like what she had become. The choice of what to do now that she could not go back was still hers, and it was a welcome choice, easier than anything she had done so far.

Yousra walked into the lake. It was so clear she could see the ruins in the bottom; the derelict boats and scattered stone animal pens and circular foundations of old houses.

The Hero was shouting at her, but there were no more silvery ships in the sky. No one to save either of them. They were left to their own choices.

Yousra closed her eyes as the water lapped up above her head, and she remembered all those dead babies. The castrated men they thought belonged to the Heroes, the broken cities, and the ships she had melted away.

She could reward herself for becoming this woman, and take the spoils granted. But the spoils were not hers. They were rewards taken from the bodies of others. Rewards built on death and lies and revenge. If that was the universe these people wanted to build, she wanted none of it.

The water was very cold. She swam down and down and looped her belt through a hole in a derelict boat, and when she could stand it no longer, she took a breath and inhaled cold, clear water, and screamed and screamed into the darkness.

• • • •

“Run it again,” the girl said.

“It’s just a simulation,” her mother said. The barren waste of the world being terraformed behind them came briefly back into their vision as the headwoman’s watery grave faded from the viewing lens.

“Again,” the girl said. “I want to know if she makes a different choice.”

“She doesn’t,” her mother said. “It’s why there was still a world here at all, when we came back up from the banks underground after our long sleep. If she had chosen differently, we all would have died, or become part of her terrible army. We would have been different people.”

“Again,” the girl said.

Her mother frowned. “Would you have chosen differently?”

The girl said nothing.

Her mother played it again, and again the Heroes left their men on the dying fields, and again, Yousra made her choice.

©2016 by Kameron Hurley. Originally published in Patreon.com/KameronHurley. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kameron Hurley is the author of The Mirror Empire, Empire Ascendant and the God’s War Trilogy. Hurley has won the Hugo Award, Kitschy Award, and Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer; she has also been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, BFS Award, the Gemmell Morningstar Award, and the BSFA Award for Best Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Popular Science Magazine, Year’s Best SF, and Meeting Infinity. Her nonfiction has been featured in The Atlantic, Locus Magazine, and the collection The Geek Feminist Revolution.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Taste the Singularity at the Food Truck Circus

Jeremiah Tolbert | 8590 words

“There’s a stall in the new market where they cook just about anything on a stick.” These were the words, spoken by coworkers returning to the office from an early lunch, that drew me from my cubicle and onto the streets one late April afternoon. Everyone has their weaknesses, and mine has always been food.

Anything? I thought. We’ll see about that.

Already a humid heat had settled over Kansas City—a heat that arrived a little earlier every year now. Sweat soaked through my shirt by the time a streetcar arrived. I barely found a place to safely hold onto the exterior of the car when it chimed and darted away, riding the slope down towards the Missouri River carrying myself and a few dozen freshly arrived coastal refugees. I would have thought it impossible, but the air grew more damp and warm as we descended the small hill.

When the streetcar slowed at an intersection, I hopped off two stops ahead of the Market and walked. The over-crowding on the car made me uncomfortable, but mostly I wanted to take my time to stroll past the carts. The influx of coastal refugees brought all kinds of concerns, good and bad, but it’d done wonders for the food cart scene.

The air was heavy with a mix of Creole spices, pan-Asian scents that reminded me of my grandmother’s kitchen, and always that glossy-tongued hint of fry grease. Voices cried out in a variety of regional accents, hawking the standards and more unusual creations. My perpetually stuffy sinuses opened wide to take it in.

The heat, the scents, and my hunger drew me back to the days when I thought I might be a part of it all. I hadn’t grown up dreaming of becoming an accountant; my father “counted beans,” and it was my pre-destined profession according to my conservative parents. I was more interested in the beans, less in the counting. When I turned twelve, I used my birthday money to enroll in a cooking class at a local learning annex, paying extra to have the in-person classes instead of the virtual ones.

Except for one boy my own age, lonely men on the hunt for second wives made up the class. The instructor and sole woman (sadly for my fellow students, happily married) paired me with the other boy for the class exercises.

There’s a lot of time to talk in a kitchen, so we made small talk. In the baking section, small talk turned into serious conversation.

I learned that FEMA had resettled Alberto in KCMO along with his mother and father, an aunt, two sisters, and a brother. When Miami went past the tipping point, they’d lost the family restaurant to the rising water. Here in KC, his parents were busy trying to start a new restaurant, but it was almost impossible for refugees to get a loan.

“Why are you even in this class?” I asked. While the lessons were work for me, Alberto had been in kitchens his whole life. Scrambling eggs or dicing onions was as easy for him as breathing.

“My mother thought I should learn ‘gringo cooking’ to help me find a job,” Alberto had answered with a sly grin.

My skills around a kitchen improved and I learned many useful techniques, but what I took away most was that some people had an innate talent for working with food. Alberto had it. I didn’t. The flames of my interest guttered and died. I ended up in accounting and I lost touch with Alberto. We were both a little shy, and neither one of us took the initiative to build a real friendship outside of the practice kitchen.

I never lost my interest in food, but I’d diverted it into eating it. I adored street food especially. If not for my plans lately of setting out as a freelance accountant and the savings I required to do so safely, I would have eaten at a different stall, cart, or truck every day. The only way I could moderate my spending safely when it came to food carts was to spend nothing at all. I couldn’t deny how happy the sights, sounds, and scents of the carts made me, though.

Part of the appeal was the low-budget vibe. AR-space around the carts was uncluttered with ads demanding permission to display—signage was purely real and often hand-painted. As I walked, one sign adverting particularly tasty-looking Thai burritos tested my resolve for some old-fashioned food-on-a-stick. I held strong and made my way out of the chaos of the cart maze into the cooler, shaded walkways of the old River Market proper.

The center of River Market was a large U-shaped building composed of dozens of permanent food stalls, fruit markets, spice shops, and a museum featuring a dredged-up old riverboat. The shops faced inward, and in the center, rows of sheet metal awnings shaded empty stalls. Farmers from across the three-state region backed in to sell fresh produce during the growing and harvest seasons on the summer weekends.

The Market was a foodie paradise, and I had avoided it for months as a serious threat to my business plans. The lunch crowd didn’t bring the space to anywhere near the capacity it would reach during peak farmer’s market weekends, but from vascular muscle memory, my pulse raced at walking into the space. Avoidance had been so much easier for the past year; the complex had been closed to add two more stories of shops to the U-shaped building. I had done so well, saving. I knew I was taking a risk here, but I’d earned a treat by being so diligent for so long. Just one treat. Back to my packed sack lunches tomorrow, I promised myself.

Fresh new odors wafted down from the upper decks. I took the stairs up and navigated through the heavy lunch crowd until I saw the sign that read simply, in serif letters, STICK. A wooden skewer ran through the word. A line wound out the door and twenty feet down the walkway. I’d found the place.

A man in his mid-twenties like myself, covered in tattoos and piercings and sporting blue hair (unlike myself) worked the register and shouted barker-style to draw the crowd in. It didn’t seem necessary given the size of the line, but his patter was good.

“I have one rule about street food: I must be able to dance with it. You can keep your gyros and tacos; lettuce goes everywhere! No, give me a simple stick—the original food on the go. I tell you, the reason we’re so fat is because we invented utensils. When we started cooking food we had to sit down for, it was all over for the human race.”

The line moved fast and gave me just enough time to puzzle through the menu and make a decision. I decided to go with the Spaghetti on a Stick out of sheer curiosity at how such a concoction was even possible, but the Soup on a Stick was equally tempting.

“Welcome, what can we skewer for you, man?” Up close at the front of the line, I realized who the man behind the counter was: Alberto, thirteen years older than I had last seen him.

The seeming coincidence left me speechless for a moment. “Hey, um, Alberto. Long time no see,” I stammered. “I’ll have the #3.”

He shouted the order into the frenetic kitchen. I touched my chip against the reader and stepped to the side. When he handed me my order in a paper baguette bag, he flicked me an aug-card with his contact details. I reflexively did the same.

“Have you been refining that speech about food on a stick since we were kids?” I asked. This, I realized, was why I had been thinking of Alberto before. During one of our classes, he’d delivered a similar, passionate rant about utensils.

“Hah, maybe. Hey, let’s catch up when I’m not getting my ass slammed at work,” he said with that same sly grin I remembered. “Who’s next? Try the original food-on-the-go with an all-new spin . . .” and so his patter continued.

I stepped away from the throng and gently lifted the wrapper off my lunch. The “stick” appeared to be a thin but surprisingly strong bread-stick, and the “spaghetti” clung around it with a thin marinara sauce by some gastronomic technique I couldn’t identify. I bit into the end carefully. The pasta was cooked perfectly, and the sauce wonderfully tangy, with just the right hint of basil. The center of the bread stick was stuffed with moist hamburger, but probably faux stuff as I’d only paid twelve dollars for the meal.

Do I need to stretch my vocabulary to the limits in telling you how marvelous it tasted? How about this instead: I devoured the entire delicious concoction and shuffled back in line for seconds.

I returned to my workspace fifteen minutes late. My supervisor gave me a disapproving shake of her head, but I didn’t mind. For seventy-five minutes, I’d felt happier than I had in a year.

• • • •

Over the next three lunches, I worked my way through Stick’s entire menu. Each time, Alberto promised he’d get in touch soon. “You see how it is,” he said, waving to the ever-growing lines.

I took to watching the kitchen while I ate my meals, tucked around the corner from the counter area. Stick’s preparation methods were, rumor was, a closely guarded secret, but from what I could tell, they were using modified last-generation 3D printers for some of the assembly, which explained how they were able to keep up with demand. They had to be running some serious custom software to build anything as complex as soup or spaghetti on a stick, though.

Friday night, after my fourth visit (I had the capybara dog-on-a-stick), I received a text-only message from Alberto that was just an address in Olathe and the note: “Come see the Circus.” Maps showed it to be a mostly-abandoned industrial park, another victim of urban contraction as people moved in closer and closer to the city center. Gas prices were all over the place and now the suburbs were ghost towns. The cities thrived, at least.

I did a quick balance check; the numbers said I could swing it without putting myself too far behind on my goal, if I pointedly ignored the fact that I’d blown my food budget for the week. I sent a message back, forecasting my arrival in an hour. I pinged for an Uber autocar, and waited out front the four or five minutes for it to arrive.

Traffic heading out of the city and across the river was light; I passed the time trying to dig up fresh information about Alberto on the net. His name didn’t come up very often—once or twice he was interviewed on review shows or blogs about his experiences working for this or that kitchen in dining establishments around town.

The autocar exited the interstate and drove down empty roads, past abandoned condos and boarded up suburban homes. It was surprisingly dark out here—even the streetlights were out in most places. A few windows gleamed here and there—whether due to fringe hold-outs or squatters, I wasn’t sure. Eventually, we turned off onto another, narrower side road that was laden with potholes and bumped past an abandoned parking lot gate.

Past an overgrown row of hedges, then, and I made out the astonishing sight of a small city on wheels. Dozens of food trucks were parked in a pair of concentric circles, tied together by makeshift awnings and banners. Litters of assorted cheap lawn furniture gathered in the open spaces forming impromptu seating areas that bustled with activity. In the center ring, hundreds of trendily dressed people milled about, some swaying to the heavy Reggaetón beat that issued from loudspeakers on some of the trucks.

Above, the sky was alive with micro-drones, brilliant LEDs gleaming on their undersides. Portable floodlights erected on three-story masts cast sharp-edged shadows in every direction. It was an oasis of flavor in a sea of ghostly Applebee’s and nameless steak houses.

I ignored the autocar’s warning about extended wait times for a return trip and stepped out into the early summer air. A light breeze carried a delicious potpourri my way. The odor promised everything that the food carts of downtown did and more.

“Hey, you made it,” Alberto said from under a nearby tree. The purple light on the end of an e-cig dimly illuminated Alberto’s face. He stepped out into the lights and slipped the e-cig into the pockets of his khakis. He wore a t-shirt advertising something called GIFTS FROM CROWES.

“Hey, good to see you,” I pointed to the shirt, and asked hopefully: “What’s that? New restaurant?”

He shrugged. “One of my projects. We were a Counting Crows cover band, but we dressed up as different Russell Crowe characters, like the gladiator one and the crazy mathematician. You know?”

I laughed. “Did you get a lot of gigs?”

He shook his head. “We played three times. There aren’t that many good Counting Crows songs. Anyway! Welcome to the Circus.” He swept his arms wide like a ringmaster.

I’d been avoiding the foodie scene online for months, but still I’d heard rumors about an exclusive pop-up food experiment. I’d half-hoped the rumors wouldn’t turn out to be true, for the sake of my savings. I was already revising my budget for the night upward based on what I’d seen so far.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw so many food trucks in one place,” I said.

“The old gas-powered ones are too expensive to run a real operation out of,” Alberto admitted. “The Circus isn’t about money though. Most of the chefs here have other jobs that pay the bills. The Circus is where we experiment and play with cutting edge cuisine. Really push the limits, sabes?”

I did a quick headcount and some back-of-the-envelope math, nodding. Factoring in standard street food prices, varying depending on vendor popularity, but using elevated material costs based on higher quality restaurant fare, I figured most would be lucky to break-even.

“That’s, yeah, wow,” was all I could muster. I was starting to pick up on a crowd vibe; it reminded me of something like going to a rave crossed with Sunday church service.

“Let’s get a snack in the outer ring and catch up a little,” he suggested.

We stopped at the first truck, which was serving fairly conventional West Coast-style fish tacos, but they were artfully presented and made with shockingly fresh ingredients.

“Good, huh?” Alberto said between bites. I nodded along as he chewed. It was good, but not exceptional, not like the rumors I had heard drifting around.

He asked what I had been up to since our class days, and I told him the short version of things. High school, college at a state school in Missouri, short period of time with a failed startup, and then into the salary-man trenches for Biechmann Accounting. It sounded depressing coming out of my mouth, especially compared to his story.

Alberto had worked his way up the chain of jobs from busboy to sous-chef on the local restaurant scene. He too had done his time in the start-up failure mines, but for three years longer than I had. After each startup failure, Alberto had gone back to work for his “pendejo father” in the family restaurant.

“But fuck that. He’s just so conventional, so bland, you know? He thinks the best food is what he’s been making his whole life. Never wants to try anything new.”

“Stick is pretty fresh,” I said, feeling lame for it.

He shrugged. “Stick is okay, but . . . well, you just wait until the inner ring.” He paused, and his eyes glinted strangely in the floodlights. “It’s been cracking me up all week watching you eat. You can’t control your expression at all when you taste good food, you know? If Stick makes you show your O-face, I think the Circus is going to blow your head off your shoulders!” He laughed and slapped his thigh. I felt my face turn red—was I really that obvious?

“Don’t worry about it,” he said apologetically. “I don’t mean to embarrass you.”

I tried changing the subject. “I can’t get a signal out here for the Net,” I said. “I knew it was bad out here in the sticks, but not like this.”

“The drones are running signal interference,” Alberto explained, pointing overhead. “The Circus isn’t licensed and official. You can take pictures and stuff, but you can’t connect to the Net until after you leave.”

“Okay,” I said, and I felt a little thrill at the illicit nature of it all. Underground food here in Kansas City! And they said nothing interesting ever happened in the Midwest. “I think I’m ready to have my head knocked off or whatever,” I said. “These tacos are good, but I’ve had better in Little Havana.”

Alberto turned serious. “Okay, but first you have to promise me you’re going to stay chill. Not everything you see here is gonna be your cup of soup. We’re talking illegal at best, FDA-banned at worst.” He spat on the ground after saying the initials of the government branch responsible for food and drug legalities. I blinked at that. “But hey, I won’t ask you to try anything I haven’t tried myself, got it?”

Curiosity won out over my unease at the dire warnings. Just what kind of food were they serving out here? “Okay.”

“Good! Let’s head to Wiggle first. Everybody starts at Wiggle. You’ll see why.”

We pushed inward towards the center and got in line at a sleek, white electric truck that looked familiar—I was pretty sure I’d seen it parked outside my office building selling gravy-fries in the past, but its AR-signage was reprogramming from a generic and forgettable French-Canadian name to the word WIGGLE. The individual letters were animated, and when I squinted, I made out that the letters were writhing worms.

“Uh, not sure about this,” I muttered, but if Alberto heard me, he pretended not to have. “Bugs are pretty bland stuff.”

The line cleared and we stood in front of a large-chested blonde woman. She leaned out of the side of the truck through the order window and beamed at my companion.

“Alberto, welcome back! You want the usual?”

“Let’s do two plates of Recharge tonight,” Alberto said. She nodded and ducked back inside the truck. When she returned a moment later, she handed across two medium-sized white Styrofoam containers, and then a second later, two large drink cups with straws.

We sat at one of the dozens of makeshift tables someone had scattered around the parking lot. Alberto grinned, thumb on the tab to open his, and said: “You trust me, right?”

What I wanted to say was, “No, not really, I hardly know you.” What I said was: “Sure.”

He popped the top and revealed completely ordinary-looking pad thai. He laughed at my expression. “What were you expecting?”

“Well, from the sign—”

“Just eat it. I’ll explain in a minute.”

It was exceptionally good pad thai, just the right amount of umami combined with some heat from a type of pepper I didn’t recognize. Warmth radiated out from my middle into my limbs as it hit my stomach. I could honestly say I’d never eaten anything like it.

My stomach continued to feel a bit odd; the drink turned out to be some kind of milkshake, which was fairly tasty but not unusual. It complemented the spice well, and helped cool my palate.

“That was really good,” I said. “But I’m still waiting for the hook.”

“Tape, not hook,” he said mysteriously.

“Huh?”

“Modded tapeworms, not hook worms,” Alberto said between bites as he finished off his container. “They should be almost full-size by now. The nutritional slurry in the shake accelerates their development.”

My eyes bugged. “No big deal,” Alberto said. “A little gross. The lombrices consume extra calories from everything else tonight and keep you from getting a foodie gut. Here’s the real ‘hook’—check out your device juice.”

I glanced into the corner of my AR space, and the icon for battery life showed it was receiving a charge.

“Worms in my stomach are wirelessly recharging my gear?” I asked, dumbfounded.

He nodded. “Flash, huh?”

“Gross, but way flash.” Alberto had promised that he’d tried all of this before, and he was still alive (unless, I thought uneasily, that he was some kind of tapeworm zombie and he’d just led me to be colonized by his brethren). “Is everything here like this?”

“The outer ring is good stuff; good, but ordinary. Those guys come to the Circus and make a few bucks off the less adventurous. Everything in the inner circle is a wild ride. Stuff you can’t even imagine until you see it, cabrón.” He glanced around, leaned in close, and whispered: “I’m going to make the inner circle. Soon as I come up with something really special.” He sat upright, threw his garbage into a beat-up can chained to the side of Wiggle. “Come on, let’s see the sights. The whole thing shuts down in a couple hours. Can’t stay in one place too long or the Feds and Slugworths start poking around.”

“The Slug-what?”

“You never read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Slugworth was Wonka’s arch-enemy. Always wanted to steal from Wonka. We’ve had corporate spies poking around, trying to steal concepts from us little folk. But we have countermeasures, don’t worry.” The word “countermeasures” was a little ominous, but I said nothing. I had my sights set on whatever the next truck was offering.

Breathe sold complete meals in aerosol containers. The owner was a short, squat man named Stavros who assured me that their meals were the real experience of calories and nutrients, just delivered more rapidly. It wasn’t my cup of tea or Alberto’s.

“Eh, it’s okay I guess,” he said as we walked on. “I’m not sure how they got into the circle with this weak stuff, though. They’d better take it up a notch next time.”

We followed that up with truck with a name written in Asian characters which I couldn’t translate without Net access. “Name literally means ‘Kanji.’ These guys are expert fabbers,” Alberto said. “One of the founders of Stick backs this one too.”

That night they were selling small fried food automatons that could be wound up with something that resembled onion string and then set loose to walk across a table. They looked like crosses between accordions and crabs, and indeed tasted subtly like fish. Alberto and I were both baffled by how they were powered.

At Pleasure and Pain, Alberto convinced me to get the piercer. On the surface, the dish resembled simple escargot. He instructed me in the careful placement in my mouth. I felt an astonishing mixture of very intense flavors, each shift punctuated by startling pain. After I swallowed, Alberto held up a mirror. A shiny bone-like spike had been driven through the center of my tongue.

“Outh,” I said, touching it gingerly.

“Now you look like you belong here,” Alberto said with a laugh. “Don’t worry; it’ll dissolve overnight and your tongue will heal the day after thanks to a cocktail of time-release quick-healing enzymes. Military grade stuff, totally black market.”

“Okay . . .”

Before we could move on to the next offering, Alberto stopped to stare at the crowd. He nudged me and pointed in the direction of a man dressed more formally, like myself. The suit watched through a side window into the kitchen of Kanji, fingers doing the invisible-typewriter dance as he took notes in AR.

“Slugworth,” Alberto hissed. “Come on.”

He pushed through the crowd. The suit turned just in time to take a right hook to the jaw from Alberto, which sent him sprawling onto the cracked pavement.

“We’ve got a Slugworth here!” Alberto shouted, and several well-muscled men in tight black shirts manifested out of the night. They took up struggling limbs of the accused and half-dragged, half-carried the man into the center of the circle. Alberto and I followed.

The omnipresent music shut off and a crowd began to gather, expressions eager, but I felt uneasy. Unsafe. Alberto stepped into the circle and began to address the crowd. So he wasn’t that shy refugee kid anymore. He spoke and his gear amplified his voice through the sound systems around us.

“I hope everyone is having a great time tonight. Are we having a great time?” The crowd cheered. “How about a little show to go with your dinner then? This ugly dude is Sam Carlton. He works for United Edibles.”

The man shook his head vigorously. “I’m not—” The crowd booed loudly. Someone threw an empty beer can at him, and it bounced off his forehead. That seemed to take the fight out of him, and he slumped. “Okay, yeah. You got me.”

“And what does that make him?”

The crowd roared back: “Slugworth!”

“Bring out the Shill Wheel!” Alberto demanded, and the crowd cheered again. A large wheel, like a prop from an old game show, was wheeled out into the circle by security. I squinted to read the labels on it—they said things like “Knuckle Fries” and “Bad Fugu.” I didn’t know what any of it meant. One sliver of the wheel was green and labeled “Go Free.” That one, at least, I could guess at.

“What will it be tonight? Will we get the Fried Knuckles? I know the boys over at Long Pig are close to perfecting their technique. For you noobs, that’s when we cut off the Slugworth’s hand, smoke it, and make him eat it. With his choice of sauce, of course—we’re not animals.”

The crowd laughed. I felt queasy, and for the first time that night I began to regret coming to the Circus. They weren’t really going to do that to the man, were they? I wasn’t sure. The whole scene was reminding me of the playground in elementary school; one kid would do something stupid and the rest turned on him or her. Public shaming ruined my appetite.

“We leave your fate up to the Culinary Gods,” Alberto said. “Spin the Shill Wheel!”

Sobbing now, but unheard over the crowd’s jeers, Sam spun the wheel. Alberto’s voice was replaced over the sound system with a tick-ticking of the arrow against the pegs that stuck from its surface.

The wheel slowed, and things did not look good for Sam; “Sharpen the Blades” didn’t conjure pleasant images.

The wheel slowed at this wedge, and then, at the final possible moment, jumped over to “Set Free.” The crowd groaned and cursed.

“Guess this is your lucky night, Slugworth! Get out of here. If we see you around the Circus again, you won’t get another spin. Chop, chop, fingers straight to the fryer.” The burly men released the spy. He scurried into the crowd, which did not treat him well with their shoves and pushes, but no one stopped his flight.

The crowd broke up and the music returned. Alberto walked towards me with a grin that made my stomach want to turn inside out.

“Worms got you unsettled?” he asked.

“What the fuck was that?” I demanded.

He frowned and took a hesitant step back. It was the first time since seeing him at Stick that I’d caught him off-guard. “Just a little show to entertain folks. I help out with the organizers for now.”

“A show? It looked a lot like mob justice,” I snapped.

Alberto sighed, guided me by my shoulder into the shadows between two trucks. “Listen, the wheel is rigged. We don’t cut people’s hands off. You didn’t really believe it, did you?”

“I don’t know!” I felt my face flushing with embarrassment again. “You hear all kinds of stories about crazy people who work in kitchens.”

“It’s true; kitchens are staffed entirely by psychotics, drug addicts, and ex-cons. Also, I want to sell you some prime real estate in Florida. Please. The Wheel serves a couple of purposes. Entertains the crowd, which is good, but it also puts the fear of God in the Slugworths. Nothing at the Circus is for sale to those factory food pendejos. We might be a bunch of no-good food slingers, but we have some principles.”

I took a deep breath. “I think I’ve had enough of this for one night. Is there a place where I can get some Net access and call for an autocar?”

Just then someone shouted “Feds!” in the distance and people began shouting and running. With startling speed, the food trucks began folding up awnings. Engines hummed to life all around us. A voice over a loudspeaker somewhere behind flashing lights demanded that we “stay where you are.”

“Shit, what do we do?” I shouted over the din. I couldn’t afford bail after splashing so much on food and the autocar.

“Come on. I have my bike.”

Alberto ran, and I followed, over to an electric motorcycle behind one of the abandoned buildings of the complex. It gleamed red and sleek in the starlight.

“How are we going to get past the cops?”

“Bah, those aren’t real cops; they’re FDA goons.” He tossed me a helmet. I fumbled with the straps. “Don’t worry, we scout our sites carefully and plan escape routes. Hop on.”

I’d never ridden a motorcycle before, and it was exactly as exhilarating and terrifying as I’d imagined. The best thing about it was not having to talk to Alberto on the ride; too noisy with the roar of the engine and the wind, and it made me especially nauseous, but that might have been my shame and embarrassment for overreacting to the Slugworth incident.

Alberto followed a half-overgrown side road out the rear of the complex and into the greater city of Olathe, then down side streets and state highways back to the city. When the bike finally rolled to a stop in front of my apartment building, I stumbled off and into the gutter. I vomited up half of what I’d eaten that night; I tried to ignore the writhing, glowing worms in the mix of undigested food; the sight of them only made me wretch harder.

“Hey,” Alberto mumbled. “That was a lot to put on you for the first time at the Circus. It’s just that your enthusiasm reminds me how it used to feel to be really, truly excited.”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and shrugged. “Forget it. It was just a little too much excitement for me. My average night involves some VR on the couch and a glass of warm milk.”

“Yeesh,” Alberto said. He looked away for a moment. Then looked back. “I asked you to come see the Circus with an ulterior motive. I don’t even know if I should bring it up now.”

Of course he wanted something. This wasn’t about rekindling an old friendship at all. “Go ahead. Just ask.”

He shook his head. “Nah. Maybe next time. The team’s probably already at our secret headquarters planning the next Circus.”

I surprised myself by saying, “Can I go? Maybe this time I’ll keep the food down.”

“Maybe,” he said with a sly, growing smile. “I’ll message you.” He kicked the bike into gear and sped off into the night without another word.

Once inside my apartment, I felt I could breathe properly again, but my stomach had settled enough that I was starving. Had I gotten out all the energized worms or were a few gnawing away still?

I cooked until dawn; I made omelets, pancakes, and cooked a pair of steaks. I even baked a cake. I ate all of it. It wasn’t until the sun came up that I finally felt something like satisfaction in my stomach. Still, some other part of me was hungry for something. I fell asleep watching an old Bourdain aug-doc and dreamed about a circus with a tamer that lashed his whip at giant pastries instead of lions.

• • • •

After, I forced myself back on my standard meal plan. I stopped eating at the Market. I focused on work and watched the money slowly accumulate in my savings. The satisfaction at seeing the small numbers grow steadily was less than it had been before, but I knew that if I avoided Alberto’s world, the excitement would fade and I’d be back to my boring self. Only . . . was that what I really wanted?

Two weeks passed without a message from Alberto. I assumed that he’d found someone else to pitch his mystery request and forgotten all about me. It was to be another quiet night in for me with a bowl of Szechuan tofu with the VR on.

The heat and eight flights of stairs left me breathless. I slumped on my couch and panted, waiting for the building’s AC to wick away the moisture and, if I was lucky, my mild depression with it. As my breathing calmed, I became aware of a soft tapping somewhere. I climbed to my feet and traced the sound over to the window. What the hell?

I pulled aside the curtains, worried what I would find. I did not expect to see a pigeon. Well—an ordinary pigeon, maybe, but not one made from what appeared to be animate marzipan and cake. Its eyes were little red candies that sparkled in the light. I turned away and looked back, like they do in the movies when they’re not sure what they’re seeing is real. It remained.

It tapped at the window again with its almond beak. It took me ten minutes to figure out the safety locks, but I finally managed to open the window. I brought the pigeon inside, cupped gently in my palms. I found a note tied around its ankle, which simply said “EAT ME.”

I stared at the pigeon. It “stared” back. Finally, I mustered the courage to rip off its head. Near as I could tell, the entire bird was edible, although the inside was more air than breading. The taste was delicate, like rose petals. It only took a few minutes to consume, and I felt a little guilty afterward. I’d expected to find another note with directions to the next Circus. But nothing.

A minute later, as I flopped onto my sofa with a sigh, I realized my arm itched. I rolled up my sleeve. Hives rose up, spelling out coordinates for an address north of the city, across the river. This was even more the middle of nowhere than the last time.

After some digging on the Net, I realized why I found nothing on the map—I was looking on the surface. The next site for the Circus was in Subtropolis.

At one point, Subtropolis had been one of the world’s largest underground storage facilities, but after the last economic downturn, ownership of the 1,100-acre man-made cave system fell into dispute among a dozen creditors of the former owner. Last I had read, which giant corporation owned the caverns was still a subject of million of dollars’ worth of court battles.

A giant, abandoned man-made cave seemed to me like a pretty good place for something like the Circus. Maybe the Feds would be less likely to raid this one.

I took another autocar, which dropped me off on the appropriately named Underground Drive. From there, I just followed the music down a path through some trees and into a tunnel carved into the limestone rock of a hillside. It was large enough to drive semi-trucks into, and probably had been used that way many times.

A cute girl dressed like a comical miner stereotype, suspenders, hat with light on the front, and with a 3D-fabbed foam pickaxe over her shoulder, stopped me at the gate. “You have the look of a slimy Slugworth,” she said, tone not remotely friendly. I realized that I was wearing my usual business casual get up—button-up shirt, jacket. Not Circus attire at all. I hadn’t even stopped to change.

I rolled up my sleeve to show the hives, and when that failed to impress, I said “I’m, uh, friends with Alberto.” She stared for a moment into the middle distance, obviously communicating with someone over AR, then nodded. “Sorry.” She took off her miner’s helmet and fitted it over my head. “This will keep others from hassling you.”

I thanked her and followed the tunnel inside. It turned gradually and opened up into a massive space like a warehouse. The same food trucks were gathered in rearranged-but-similar circles, but the crowd looked like it had doubled in size since the last time. The near brush with the Feds last time must have made the event even more exciting to a certain subset of people. It made my stomach do flips thinking about our near-capture.

Alberto wove his way out of the crowd gathered between Taco Republic and Weiner Wagon. I offered to shake hands, but he hugged me instead.

“I’m impressed; not a lot of accountants would dare to eat a confectionary pigeon. Did you enjoy it? I came up with the idea with help from the gastrogineers at Kanji.”

“How did you even get it up there? It tasted great, of course.”

He smiled mischievously. “It flew there, what do you think? That was nothing, though. Wait until you see what’s in the inner circle this time. Everybody’s upping their games, amigo.”

We skipped the outer ring and went straight for the main show. I passed on a plate at Wiggle—I hadn’t eaten much all day and was confident I could sample everything else I wanted.

Long Pig was offering the usual human flesh, vat-grown, of course, only they had a new, even more outrageous offering of genuine “baby-back” ribs. I couldn’t get over my squeamishness enough to try anything except a little of their blood-based sauces, the O-neg and B-positives. They were exceptional—the B was smoky and mellow, and the O was sharp, acidic, with a citrus aftertaste.

I was especially interested to see what Breathe had come up with. “Genuine scent memory meals,” the owner explained, handing me another one of their trademark inhalers. “Have a whiff.”

I cracked the seal and inhaled the container’s contents. Nostalgia washed through me, and suddenly I was at my grandmother’s dining room table and she was serving me her specialty, a plate of old-fashioned ham and beans. They tasted exactly as I remembered them. I was there, in that moment, until I finished the bowl, and then I returned to the present.

I half-staggered away, thanking them as Alberto giggled and led me onward. “You’re going to love this next one,” he said mysteriously.

The biggest line of the show by far was for Kanji. They were advertising something with a twenty-foot-long animated banner called the “Kaiju Experience.”

While we waited in line, which advanced at a glacial pace, we did our best to make small talk. I wanted to know what his ulterior motive was for asking me out to the Circus, but I was also worried that the real reason would upset me. I resolved to enjoy my time on the inside of something special, and concern myself with reasons later.

After a nearly twenty-minute wait, we made it to the front, where the Kanji people had set up a small trailer with an entrance and exit.

“Pay up front,” the cashier said. The price was nearly triple the next most expensive thing at the Circus, but Alberto assured me it was worth it.

“Reset’s done,” a lanky boy in spattered and stained coveralls said, poking his head out the door.

“I got to sample this one in testing,” Alberto said, waving me in.

The inside of the trailer was dark, but once my eyes adjusted, I realized I was standing over a miniature city under starlight. The tallest buildings reached my shoulder, but most were barely waist-high. I bent to examine the nearest one and saw the interiors were modeled, with tiny gummy people moving about inside.

I pushed gently against the building and it cracked. I took a piece and held it up to my tongue. Gingerbread?

Ahead, tiny sirens began to blare. I took a tentative step forward, and a booming sound effect played in time with my step. Below me, I heard high-pitched screams.

“Gojira!” something cried out from a window. I plucked it and examined it. It squirmed and moved, but near as I could tell, it was completely edible. So I ate it.

Sweet, a little salty. Delicious. I had to have more. A sugar-frenzy came over me; I smashed buildings and grabbed handfuls of the tiny candy people, shoving them into my mouth. I may have even let loose a little roar.

This went on for a minute before the tiny candy tanks rolled out. I smashed and ate a few of those, too. The experience ended when a B-2 bomber dropped a cotton candy a-bomb on me. A delicious, delicate pink cloud filled the room. The lights came up and the boy in coveralls ushered me towards the exit. I chewed my way out, laughing all the way.

“That. Was. Amazing,” I shouted, grabbing Alberto by the shoulder and shaking him. “Can I do it again?”

“Only if you want the diabetes.”

“How in the world do they make any of that work?” I wanted to know the secret behind this more than any other treat.

Alberto nodded to the boy in coveralls. “This is Etienne, the creator. Ask him.”

“Glad you liked it,” Etienne said. “We’ve got these programmable bacteria we grow from probiotics. They can work together in a gel medium to create a kind of skeleton. We’re working on other mediums, though. I think you saw one of my newer experiments earlier tonight.”

“You did the pigeon? That was also great, but I was kind of afraid to eat it. Too realistic. The gummy people are just cartoony enough that I didn’t feel guilty eating them,” I said.

Etienne took out a notebook and jotted something down. “That’s really good feedback, thanks. I better get in and set up the next attack.” He nodded toward Alberto. “Talk to you later, Al.”

“Okay. I don’t think I can eat anything else,” I said. “Why don’t you go ahead and say what do you want to tell me?”

We took a seat nearby the Kaiju Experience and watched the giggling satisfied customers for a while in silence. And just as he was about to explain, two of the black-shirted security guys interrupted him.

“Alberto, we caught another Slugworth snooping,” one said.

Alberto smiled apologetically and stood to follow the guards, and I, in turn, followed him. The guards had an elderly Hispanic man kettled up between them, and the wheel was already rolling out from wherever it was kept.

Alberto stopped short of entering the circle and stared at the man. “Papi?” he whispered.

“That’s your father?” If I squinted, I could see the family resemblance in posture and facial features, but clearly, he got his height from his mother’s side. “What are you going to do?”

Alberto remained frozen for another moment. The crowd was already thirsty for blood, chanting “Shill Wheel, Shill Wheel.” Alberto finally leapt into the spotlights that someone had trained on the makeshift stage. “Sorry for the delay, amigos y amigas. It looks like we’ve caught another filthy Slugworth! This pendejo thought he could get away with smuggling food out of the Circus. What punishment benefits this crime?”

Alberto’s father said something I couldn’t hear over the crowd, but from his gesture he was clearly pleading with Alberto. Alberto avoided looking at him and pasted on a marzipan smile for the crowd.

“All right, you asked for it! Let’s spin the wheel.” Alberto spun the wheel hard, the only signal I could see that really showed how he felt about the situation. Despite Alberto’s assurance that the wheel was rigged, I held my breath.

The arrow stopped briefly on “Prick Piercing,” which I guessed involved something horrible from Pleasure and Pain, but it drifted at the last second to “Marshmallow Madness.”

More volunteers in fake miner costumes walked through the crowd handing out small bags. I took one and looked inside; it looked to contain ordinary marshmallows, white and fluffy, but I knew better than to trust surface appearances at the Circus. For a brief moment, Alberto allowed his distress to play across his face.

Alberto whispered something to his father and then dodged away as a hail of marshmallows rained down on the old man. When they struck, they splattered and became gooey, like room temperature white tar. It wasn’t long before the old man was unrecognizable under a heap of marshmallow goo. Alberto held his hands up and the throwing petered away. “Get him out of here,” Alberto said sharply to security, and they began to drag him off.

I’d had enough. “How could you do that to your own dad?” I demanded.

“He was a Slugworth,” Alberto said, but his gaze was glossy, dazed. “I had to do it, or nobody would have respected me.”

I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him in search of his father. The magic of the Circus had worn off. I was done with all of this. “You have the next minute to explain what the hell you want from me,” I snarled.

“Oh man,” Alberto groaned. “I wanted to talk to you for the same reason my Dad was probably snooping around. The family restaurant’s not doing so well. But the place has a lot of customers. Papi and Mami think it’s just rising costs. I looked at the books, but I couldn’t figure it out. They have this bookkeeper they use from back in Florida, and I think maybe he’s stealing. When I saw your work badge that day, I thought maybe you could take a look for me. They can’t pay you, but I didn’t want to be a charity case, you know?”

“First,” I said, “of course I’ll look at their books for you. You should have asked me sooner. Second, this shit with the wheel has to stop. It’s cruel. Kick out the Slugworths, but stop making a show out of it. It’s not going to chase them away and you’ll all be tempted to get more and more serious until someone gets hurt.”

I went on, really working up a steam of anger now: “For that matter, maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking worried someone is going to steal your ideas? All of you are acting like children.”

“Hey, maybe you just don’t understand—” Albert began, but I waved my hand sharply and he fell silent again.

“You should take their interest as a compliment. Maybe consider selling some of these concepts, get real licenses, and go legitimate. There are some amazing ideas here, but you’re all just jerking off for each other.”

“It’s more like private sex shows, if you think about it,” Alberto said quietly.

“I don’t give a shit what you call it, honestly,” I said. I took a deep breath. “You need to go help your dad. You can still be mad at him. But he’s your dad.”

For once, it was someone else’s turn to look red-faced. “Okay. Yeah. Come on.”

We caught up with the guards and Alberto had a quiet word with them. They remanded Alberto’s dad into our custody. We led him to an out-of-the-way restroom and cleaned him up. With a little soap and water, the goo cleaned right off, thankfully.

“I think maybe that got a little out of hand,” Alberto said. I nudged him. “Sorry, Papi.”

“No, hijo—I shouldn’t have been snooping around. It’s just that . . . I was hoping to find something to help out with things. Business is getting worse. I’m worried we’re gonna have to close soon.”

“Before you do,” I said, “I’d like to audit your books. I’m an accountant, and I might be able to help.” I knew better than to mention Alberto’s suspicions until I had hard evidence of them.

“Papi, this is my friend Nico. Nico, this is my father.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Señor Gomez,” I said.

“You would do that for us?” He sounded so thankful that it almost broke my heart. “I can’t offer you much in return right now.”

I nodded. “Your son and I know each other from way back, and I owe him. It would be my pleasure.”

“Papi, if you wanted something from the Circus to sell, you should have just asked me,” Alberto said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to know how bad it’s gotten,” Señor Gomez said. Pride ran in the family.

“I’ll leave you two to talk things through,” I said. “I’ll stop by tomorrow night around closing time and we can look at your books, Señor Gomez?”

They nodded. Alberto gave me a hug and slapped me on the back hard. “Thanks, man.”

“Forget it,” I said with a smile. “Go hash things out.”

I walked back to the Circus. I spent the rest of the night sampling along the fringes and thinking about Alberto’s request. Wondering why I was so disappointed.

I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, but I’d been hoping that Alberto would ask me to partner with him on some restaurant idea. Maybe he’d seen some spark of talent in me back in our shared class so many years ago.

Ridiculous, really. I had a little laugh at my own expense, and I decided to drown my sorrow in food.

I used a time-honored technique of finding great food: I got at the back of the longest line I could find. The line wound around a new-looking food truck in the outer ring, obscuring whatever it was they were offering. I didn’t care; whatever it was, I was going to eat two of them.

Just as I reached the front of the line, an argument broke out between some unseen elderly man in the rear of the truck and the teenager manning the till. They were arguing in what sounded to me like Korean. She stormed out of the truck’s side door, tore off an apron, and threw it on the ground. She stalked off into the Circus, ignoring complaints from those still in line. The cook stepped into the window. He smiled apologetically.

“So sorry folks. Unless someone wants to jump in and take orders, I have to close down for the night.” A groan rose up from the line.

“Man, I was really hoping to try that kimchi pizza,” someone behind me muttered. “I heard it’s the balls.”

Talent be damned; sometimes you have to work your way up from the bottom and learn the hard way. I picked up the discarded apron and did my best to tie it on. The line behind me cheered.

“You got a spare hairnet?” I asked.

©2016 by Jeremiah Tolbert.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeremiah Tolbert has published fiction in Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Asimov’s, and Shimmer, as well as in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Seeds of Change, Federations, and Polyphony 4. He’s also been featured several times on the Escape Pod and PodCastle podcasts. In addition to being a writer, he is a web designer, photographer, and graphic artist. He lives in Kansas, with his wife and son.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Laika Comes Back Safe

Maureen F. McHugh | 5950 words

There was a special program when I was in fourth grade where this photographer came and taught us. It was called the Appalachian Art Project, and it was supposed to expose us to art. We all got these little plastic cameras called Dianas that didn’t have a flash or anything and used black and white film. The first week we took pictures of our family and then we developed them and picked one for our autobiography. Then the next week we took pictures of each other. Then the third week we took pictures of important things in our lives. The fourth week we took pictures of dreams.

Not hopes and dreams—we were supposed to take a picture of something that was like something we would dream about. I had a book from the school library about exploration in space. It was old, from the seventies, and it talked about the history of space exploration. It was really more of a boy’s book. My favorite books were horse books. All I remember from it was the part about Laika the dog. They trained this dog and they sent her up in space and they used her to see if people could survive in space and then because they couldn’t bring her back down, they left her to die up there.

That really bothered me because I had a German Shepherd named Lacey and I kept thinking about Laika up there all by herself and then just her bones going around and around. I had a bad dream about Lacey being taken to go to space. So when it was time to do the photograph of a dream, I took string and tape and I taped Lacey up with spots of tape on her chest and her head and I took her picture sitting there in the backyard. I had a parachute from one of those plastic soldiers you get that you wrap up in the parachute and throw in the air and hope the parachute opens and I taped that on Lacey, too, and had my mom hold the parachute—you can see her hand and a little of her arm in the picture—and then while mom kept Lacey from pawing all the tape and the string off, I took her picture. It’s a good picture, she’s looking at me and she has her ears up. I titled it “Laika Comes Back Safe.”

We put all the pictures on the chalk rail. I remember somebody took a picture of their steps down to their cellar. Nobody seemed to think anything of “Laika Comes Back Safe,” maybe because you could see my mom’s hand and the parachute was really too little.

Tye Petrie stood behind me in the lunch line. “Brittany, is that your dog?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“She looks like a neat dog.”

That was more than Tye Petrie had ever said to me in my life. Even though he was my second cousin, we didn’t have picnics and family reunions or anything with the Petries. “Her name is Lacey,” I said, and then I said, “I love her more than anyone else on Earth.”

I thought it sounded like a stupid thing to say, but Tye Petrie just said, “Really?” in this way that made it sound like he thought that was good thing.

“Do you have a dog?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m not allowed.”

“You can come and pet Lacey,” I said.

• • • •

We had a little white house on cinder block—my dad had built most of it himself. I was doing my homework and my dad was getting ready to leave for second swing, the shift he was working at the plant before he got messed up, and my dad looked out the window and said, “What’s that briar doing hanging on the fence?”

My dad didn’t mean anything by it, he called everybody a briar, but Tye Petrie had a real light head of hair and real pale eyes in a dark face and he did look a bit like white trash. He was waiting around by our gate. “He’s come to see Lacey,” I said, and went out.

By that time Lacey was barking her fool head off. I untied her—dad said she had to stay tied up even though we had a chain link fence because she crapped all over the front yard—and she went bounding over towards Tye. She stopped when she got close to him, looking back at me with one paw raised like she wasn’t sure of something. Then she lowered her head the way she did when she was being introduced to another dog, tail sort of neither up or down and wagging just a little.

She was acting that way because Tye was a werewolf, although he wasn’t really, not yet. I didn’t know Tye was a werewolf because he didn’t tell me for years and years. In movies, dogs are afraid of werewolves, but that’s not true. They just think they’re other dogs and if your dog hates other dogs, then they’ll hate a werewolf, too. I’m like an expert on werewolves, after knowing Tye all these years, but it’s not something that will ever do me any good. I thought about calling the X-Files people and seeing if they could use all that stuff for a movie, but I really can’t tell, and besides, I wouldn’t know how to get the phone number for a television show.

Tye and Lacey liked each other fine and we took her for a walk down the street. We hung out and he took me to the place where he’d made a fort in the woods. He came over pretty often after that and I think he went roller skating with my mom and me once. We never talked at school because I was always hanging out with Rachel and Melissa and Lindsey and he was always hanging out with Mike and Justin or somebody.

When my dad was in the motorcycle accident and messed up his back and his leg and lost his job, we had to go on the county until he got his Social Security pension settled. We moved into town and I transferred from the Knox County school system to Barbourville City Schools and went to Landry Middle School. We had to give up Lacey. The people down the street from our old house took her. I only saw Tye Petrie at church and we never said anything to each other.

I was in 4H then, doing sewing stuff, and I ran into Tye at the Knox County Fair. He wasn’t in 4H, he was just at the fair. He wasn’t hanging around with anybody and I was in the barn looking at the big draft horses. He walked up beside me like it was the school cafeteria lunch line and looked at the horse.

“Hi, Tye,” I said.

“I checked on Lacey last week,” he said. “She’s doing fine.”

When we gave up Lacey, I didn’t get mad and scream and cry like they do on TV. I didn’t say, “You can’t have her!” and she didn’t run away and find me, but it really hurt me deep inside and I never ever got over it. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, even worse than when my dad got hurt. I couldn’t say anything because I was afraid I was going to cry.

“I meant to tell you at church, but I never got a chance,” he said. “I go check on her about once a week. They take good care of her. They don’t tie her up, they let her run around their yard.”

I took a deep breath and it was like a sob. “Thanks,” I said. It came out a little shaky.

“So how’s it going?”

I shrugged. “It sucks,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”

“You want to go on the Octopus?” I said. I don’t know why, the Octopus always makes me sick. But it was the only ride I could think of.

We hung around the whole day. My mom had to take my dad home because his back hurt so bad it gave him a migraine, and Tye’s mom and dad said they’d take me home. Tye’s mom had the same coloring that Tye did, pale hair, a dark face, real pale eyes and she wore her hair up on the back of her head, kind of old fashioned. She had an accent, Tye said, because she came from a parish in Louisiana. She wasn’t pretty or anything, she looked real plain and kind of country. She didn’t say nearly anything when I was around.

Mostly, though, we were on our own, and in the evening it got cool and the lights came on in the midway and the rides would take you up and back into the dark and then down and into the light.

“Brittany’s got a beau,” my mom said when I got home and I thought it was true.

On the Tuesday of the last week before school started, I walked all the way out to Swan Pond to see him and Lacey. I got there before him. Lacey went nuts, jumping and barking, and Mrs. West came out to see what was wrong, but when she saw me she just waved and said I could come in the fence. I went inside and hugged Lacey and she licked my face. Mrs. West had a pretty garden and it had marigolds and red and white petunias.

Tye came and I said he could come in the fence. Lacey jumped all over him. Then he laid down on his back and I petted Lacey. “Do you ever wish you were a dog?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “A lot.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said.

I thought about that. It probably wasn’t. Lacey hadn’t asked to have new owners, but then I hadn’t asked to move into town and have to live on food stamps, either.

We talked about the life of a dog, and he told me about how his parents never talked to each other. They never fought, they just never talked to each other, and his father had told him once that he’d made a mistake to marry his mother. His mother took lithium for her nerves. I told him that my mom was a bitch sometimes, which she was, and she probably should be on lithium or something, and that since he got messed up, my dad had just given up on everything.

By the time I started home, I was late for dinner, but since my dad didn’t go to work anymore, we just all sort of ate whenever anyway and it really didn’t matter.

I told my mom that I’d gone to see Lacey. I didn’t tell her about Tye because I didn’t want her to tease me.

Tye and I met pretty often after that. We’d play with Lacey and then we’d walk out the gravel road to the Pope-Ball cemetery. It’s just a little farm family cemetary, just a place fenced in with a wire fence and a bunch of tombstones halfway up Pope-Ball mountain. It’s not any bigger than Wests’ yard, but there are some trees all along the back fence. Some of the tombstones are pretty old, from 1890 and stuff, but most of them are my grandparents and great aunts and uncles.

Tye told me he would never have a girlfriend, never get married. There was a genetic problem in his family and he wasn’t going to pass it on. He wouldn’t say what it was, but the way he talked, I always thought it had to do with his penis or something and that’s why he wouldn’t say.

I still liked talking, though, and I thought maybe he would change his mind about me. I thought about never having children and I didn’t know if I could marry someone like that.

We met at least once a week until it got too cold, and then when it got warm, I called him and told him I was going to see Lacey, slogged up through the mud, and there he was and everything was pretty much the same. We started high school, and still kept it up, even when I started dating Rick. I told Tye all about Rick, although I never told Rick about Tye. Tye thought Rick was a poser. Rick wore skateboarder stuff, like the big pants, and he really did skateboard, although he didn’t do stunts.

My mom was having trouble with diabetes and a lot of it was her own fault. She found out she had diabetes when she went on that liquid diet where you drink a can of stuff in the morning and a can of stuff at noon and she blacked out. Then the doctor told her to lose weight and it got worse. I never knew what we were going to eat at home—for awhile she was on this Susan Powter kick. Susan Powter is the chick with the white buzz cut, and basically she says you can’t eat anything good. Mom tried vegetarian for a little while until dad said we had to have meat at dinner. Then she did the cabbage soup diet and lost some weight but then she gained it all back. Most of the time, Rick picked me up and we went down to Taco Bell or Dairy Queen and ate. A lot of times we brought stuff back for dad.

Tye’s parents filed for divorce. He said it was a relief. His mom got a job in town at Kmart and his dad moved out. Since his mom was at work in the afternoon, he’d bring a sixpack of beer and stash it in the cemetery, and after we saw Lacey, we’d go sit and I’d drink two and he’d drink four and we’d talk about stuff.

Rick started hanging out with his friends and not coming over. He got a paintball gun and played paintball all the time and he never had any money to do anything, never wanted to come over much. He was a pain anyway, because all he ever talked about was how he was going to join the Air Force and be a pilot, or the music he liked, which was all Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and singing “Sweet Home Alabama,” or it was Garth Brooks and Clint Black. I got sick and tired of him never having time to come over and we had a big argument and broke up and then I cried for a week.

I’d go out to see Tye almost every evening and we’d sit in the cemetery, bundled up in our winter coats, long after it got dark. I didn’t think of Tye as a possible boyfriend anymore, he was more like a brother or something. He had this old plaid cloth coat and he’d sit there with his back up against my Great-aunt Ethel’s red granite tombstone—it was the biggest in the cemetery even though both her and my Great-uncle Jake drank all the time and never had any money, because John, her son, and my cousin once removed, had a good job with the nuclear plant down in Knoxville, Tennessee and he paid for the funeral—and we’d listen to Pearl Jam or U2 or Sublime until the batteries ran out on his CD player. I was talking about being a vet. That’s what I wanted to do, be a vet.

“I can’t come over the next few nights,” he said.

“Is your mom working days?”

“Yeah,” he said. He stared at his beer. “And, um, I go kinda crazy sometimes and I’m going to do it for the next couple of days.”

“You mean you, like, schedule it?” I said. I didn’t know if I was supposed to laugh or what.

“No,” he said, “I just know when it’s going to happen.” He was dead serious.

“Tye,” I said, “what do you mean?”

He shrugged. “It’s a hereditary condition. I told you I had a hereditary condition.”

“It makes you crazy sometimes?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

He wouldn’t say any more than that.

It was too cold and it was late. He promised me he’d be back out here on Tuesday unless it was raining. We had an unspoken agreement that if it was raining we just came the next time it was dry.

I rolled up our blanket and stuck it in the plastic bag we kept it in, then stashed it half under this fallen down tree and sprayed it with this pet off stuff we used to keep the animals out. I took the beer cans and Tye took the CD player. I threw out the beer cans in the dumpster in the back of the Chinese place I passed on the way home.

We lived in an apartment complex then, and I cut across the back parking lot. I could see the light through the curtains of the sliding glass door. We had a first floor apartment because of my dad’s leg.

My mom was loaded for bear when I got in. “Where have you been?”

“Shelly’s,” I said.

“I called Shelly’s and you weren’t there.”

“I went for a walk.”

“For four hours?”

“Yeah. I went out to see Lacey, my dog, and then I walked around.”

She didn’t buy it. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her I was with Tye, except that I didn’t want her coming up to the cemetery and catching me drinking beer. She was screaming about me about never being home and I just said, “Yeah, whatever,” and she slapped me.

My dad said, “For God’s sake, Betty, hitting her isn’t going to do any good!”

“Jesus!” my mom shouted, “you want your daughter running around all night?”

Oh God, they’d been arguing. I stood there, holding my face, feeling these little sobs like hiccoughs.

“She’s been out for hours without telling anyone where’s she’s been! Don’t I have a right to know where my daughter’s been?”

“You don’t have any goddamn right to hit her!”

“Maybe if you acted like a father—”

“Maybe if you got off your fat ass and got a job!”

“You don’t have the sense God gave a cockroach! You know something, Joseph Gaines Ball! You know something? I grew up! You never grew up! You just kept drinking and running around on a goddamn motorcycle!”

I ran to my bedroom and locked the door.

“Goddamn it!” my mother roared, “You get out here, you little bitch!”

My mom started hammering on my door. My dad must have tried to grab her because I heard her slap him. Then she must have punched him because he fell out in the hall. He had trouble getting up because of his back and his leg, so she could punch him when he was down, too.

“Goddamn it!” he was yelling. “Goddamn it!”

Then I could hear my mother run down the hall sobbing.

My dad was laying out there on the floor on the mauve carpeting that didn’t go with any of our furniture. “I’m going to get my gun,” my dad said in a monotone, “I’m going to get it and blow my fucking head off.” I could hear it clearly through the thin walls.

“Sure,” my mother called from the kitchen, “Lie there and pity yourself! If you think I’m going to beg you to save your sorry-ass excuse for a life, you’re wrong!”

“I’m going to blow my fucking head off,” my dad said again.

I laid on my bed in the dark and pulled my big stuffed dog up against my chest and pretended it was Lacey.

• • • •

My mom and dad were still asleep when I got up. I was late for school the next day and missed first period General Math, which was no great loss.

When I got home, my mom was waiting for me and she started in on me again, so I said, “I’m going.”

She grabbed me by the arm but I just twisted out of her grip and ran out the door. I went to see Lacey, but she was in the house, so I went up to the cemetery and found our blanket and wrapped up in it. I couldn’t face going home yet, and I didn’t know what to do. It was chilly, but not really cold. I sat leaning up against my Great-aunt’s tombstone in the sun. My parents had argued until two or three in the morning and I was tired and I fell asleep there.

I woke a couple of times and then suddenly it was dark and I’d gotten cold. It wasn’t completely dark because the moon was up, but it was strange and creepy to be walking home in the dark. My mom was waiting for me, still mad. We had another fight, and I told her I was afraid to come home to a psycho mom. She said the school had called and said I was tardy and I said that maybe if she got up and sent me off to school like a normal mom I wouldn’t be tardy.

My dad came out and said I wasn’t being fair and they told me I was grounded for a week.

I didn’t get to go out to the cemetary until my punishment was up. I called Tye Petrie and told him I’d been grounded. We didn’t talk about it on the phone. Tye didn’t like to talk on the phone. He just told me he’d see me in a week.

He was waiting in Mrs. West’s yard, and Lacey was happy to see me. I did all the things she liked, rubbing my knuckles in her ears and scratching her chest to apologize for not having seen her.

“What happened?” he asked.

“My mom and dad were having an argument, so I came out to the cemetery and I fell asleep and I didn’t get home until about nine.”

“Yeah?” Tye said. He looked tired. He’d been suddenly getting taller and he’d gone from looking like a little middle school kid to looking like one of the juniors. He even had a little bit of a moustache.

“Did you go crazy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

I wanted to know what it was like to go crazy. “What did you do?”

“Just, sorta went crazy.”

That’s all he would say and then neither one of us knew what to talk about. “When I woke up at the cemetery,” I said, “it was already dark. Scared the living shit out of me,” I said.

“Brittany,” he said, “you shouldn’t be out alone after dark.”

“I didn’t expect to be out after dark,” I said, irritated.

“No, really. I mean, I . . . um, what if something attacked you?”

“The only people that ever go to the cemetary are you and me,” I said.

“What if I attacked you?” he said.

“Don’t be weird, Tye,” I said.

“I am weird,” he said, and I grinned, but he started to cry.

I’d never seen Tye cry. “Jesus,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

That’s when he told me he was a werewolf.

I thought that maybe he really was crazy, you know? Here he was crying and telling me that he was a werewolf, for Chrissake. I patted him and said it was okay, he was okay. I wondered a lot of things about Tye, like was he gay, or was his father like, molesting him, but I never expected that he was crazy. He told me a bunch of crazy things, like how he hadn’t started changing into a wolf until this year because the change didn’t happen until you started going through puberty. He told me about how he’d been dreading it for years, and how he couldn’t really remember what had happened afterward because it was like he had experiences in a whole different way, like through smell. “So, see,” he said, “I could have hurt you really bad, Brittany. Really bad!”

“You didn’t hurt me,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. It was really crazy. Some ways, Tye was really crazy. Sometimes he was so excited it was like he was on something and he’d be talking a mile a minute. Sometimes he would sleep all Saturday and Sunday and be real depressed.

We sat there a long time while he told me about how his mom’s family in Louisiana was like this and how his mom had run away to try to get away from all that. It was crazy stuff and it was creepy listening to Tye because he really believed it but it was so strange it was really interesting. I knew if I acted like I wanted to go, Tye would think I didn’t believe him. He kept saying, “I know it sounds crazy, you probably don’t believe me, but it’s true,” and he kept watching me in this desperate way like I was the last person in his life.

Finally I had to go home or I’d get grounded again.

The next day I half thought he wouldn’t be at the Wests’, but he was there, just hanging by the fence and Lacey was sitting, looking up at him as if she was trying to talk to him. I thought about how much he had changed lately and I realized for the first time how, well, sexy, he seemed suddenly.

Lacey and I said hello.

I asked Mrs. West if we could take Lacey for a walk—sometimes we did that and Tye had me so weirded out that I wanted her with me. I took her on the leash and we walked up to the cemetary. Tye got the beers and I poured some into my hand for Lacey. She liked beer.

Lacey licked my face and then stood with her front paws on my legs. She usually only did that when I was crying or something. “Lacey,” I said, “what’s up with you today!”

“She knows you’re scared,” Tye said. “She can smell your fear. She’s trying to make you feel better.”

I almost said, “scared of what, you?” but it was true, I was scared. Not that Tye was going to hurt me, but that he was crazy and I didn’t know what to do.

“I can smell it, too,” he said.

I petted Lacey, trying to think of something to say.

“You don’t believe me,” he said. “I can smell that, too. It’s okay, it’s all pretty crazy. But I can smell your feelings. I can smell what you had for lunch, you had a cheesburger.”

I had a cheeseburger almost every day at lunch because it was about the only thing I could stand in the school cafeteria. I mean, probably Tye could have guessed that, I mean, we’d talked about it because we’d talked about how school lunches sucked. But the way he said it scared me even more.

“I can smell that you’re worried,” he said. “I can smell feelings that I don’t even have names for. I can smell you better than I can see you, Brittany.”

It was that I either had to believe him or I had to quit seeing him.

Things changed after that; like we were falling, out, away. I’d walk out to the cemetary and it was as if I wasn’t in Barboursville anymore. Tye was taller than I remembered and the pale hair on his forearms looked so soft I wanted to touch it. I knew he had to smell that change on me, too, but he didn’t say anything about it. So I studied the way his shirtsleeve was cuffed back against his skin.

He told me how, when he went out at night during what we called his “crazy times,” the whole world was different because his brain was different. “I can’t remember it afterwards,” he said.

It started to rain. I had a jacket with a hood and the rain was hard enough that it pattered on it like a roof. All around me I heard the rain on the dead leaves and the cemetary was deep in maple and oak leaves.

“I watched a place last night,” Tye said. His eyes were dark-looking underneath, like he hadn’t had much sleep. “When I got there, the light was on and I could see it through the curtains, so I lay there next to the door with my nose pressed up against the crack. I smelled macaroni and cheese.”

I felt the hair lift on the back of my neck because I knew whose place he had watched.

“I wasn’t thinking ‘macaroni and cheese,’” he said. “But today I can remember the smell, and the smell of people inside, a man and two women.”

He told me all the things we’d done, watched TV and stuff. I thought about how, when I was doing my Spanish homework, there he was, not five feet away, smelling me. I had a funny image of Tye lying there in the dark on the patio: a person, not a wolf. It was creepy.

He told me how the lights had gone out and how he had heard the television still on. My dad sat in the dark and watched TV.

Tye coughed. He had a cold.

I wanted to touch his arm, but I sat on the tombtone and felt the rain on my chilly hands. “I went to the next window,” he said, “and I smelled that smell almost as familiar as my own.”

I started to cry. I lifted my face to the November rain. Everything was spinning so fast, we were on the spinning Earth whirling along. The cold rain was wet on my upturned face and Tye leaned over and kissed me and we fell out into the sky, like Laika, whirling away.

His lips were cold from the rain and so very soft.

“I’ll hurt you, Brittany,” he said. “I won’t mean to. I’ll follow your smell.”

“No, you won’t,” I said. I was crying so hard that the words came out all muddled. “You’d never hurt me!”

But he got up and walked out of the cemetary and down the mountain.

• • • •

The next afternoon I went out to see Lacey and Tye never showed up. I went every day for a week and he still didn’t show up. So I called his house—something we almost never did—and he came to the phone.

“Hey, Tye,” I said, “it’s Brittany.”

“Hi,” he said. The silence hung there. “I’m going to get a part time job.”

“You can’t get a job,” I said, “you’re only fifteen.”

“I can get a work permit for hardship because my mom’s divorced, and there’s this guy that’s going to hire me to work in his bait shop. I won’t be able to come up to see Lacey anymore.”

“You can’t,” I whispered.

“Brit, I gotta go.” And then he hung up.

I didn’t see him for over a year after that, but then he got a job at the Pick ’n’ Pay as a stockboy and I’d see him when I went in sometimes. He’d say hello to me and act friendly, but not really personal. More like polite. And by that time I was dating Kevin and I had a job at Dairy Queen, so I didn’t have a lot of time. I was saving money to move out, but the radiator and the water pump went out on the old Accord and we had to have a car, so I had to fix it because my mom didn’t have the money. Things just kept coming up.

It was Jack Pope who first told us the news. I was sitting at the kitchen table after school watching my tape of General Hospital and my mom was eating some of those fat-free cookies, even though I’d told her they didn’t do her sugar any good, they had more sugar in them than the regular kind.

Jack doesn’t drive and he and his wife live out on the mountain near the Pope-Ball cemetery, so he walks miles and miles, and when he comes by our house sometimes he stops in for a glass of water. I didn’t think anything about it when he poked his head in. He said to my mom, “Betty, did you hear about Tye Petrie? He done killed himself.”

Normally I wouldn’t believe him. Jack doesn’t lie, but his two kids are in special education and they come by it honestly, so I’d have figured that he got something mixed up, but when he said it I just knew it.

My mom said, “Tye Petrie? Roger Petrie’s oldest boy? You knew him, didn’t you, Brit?” And then she called to my dad, “Joe? Joe? Jack Pope’s here and he says Roger Petrie’s oldest boy killed himself!”

My dad was in the bedroom like usual, but he limped out into the kitchen, even though he probably didn’t know or care about Roger Petrie or Tye Petrie. He didn’t say nothing, just stood there looking at Mom and Jack.

Mom asked Jack Pope what happened, but I didn’t want to listen. There was a ring of water on the kitchen table where my glass of Diet Coke had been sitting and I drew lines across the ring with my finger, drawing out the water.

My dad was standing there in the kitchen, and my mom was talking to Jack Pope. I just sat there and died and no one noticed.

• • • •

My mom’s been having more and more trouble with her sugar, and now she has trouble seeing. The way she keeps eating, I figure she’s going to go blind and I don’t know how my dad is going to take care of everything. Lacey died the year Tye did. Her hips got bad with hip dysplasia and she had to be put to sleep. I hadn’t seen her since Tye stopped going to the cemetary. Sometimes, when I was remembering Tye and everything that had happened, I thought she was me.

Kevin, my boyfriend, has a job at a machine shop and he’s talking about getting married. He wants a little land so we can raise a couple of beef cows, like his dad does. I don’t know any reason not to get married and Kevin says a dog would be great. I’m going to have a bunch of dogs, german shepherds and huskies and stuff. I’m going to be a veterinarian assistant, but I can’t yet because we need more money than that so I’ve got a cashier job at the Pick ’n’ Pay.

Sometimes we go down to Corbin to a bar down there that plays country and teaches line dancing, and we go out the interstate. Jack Pope told us they found his car parked on the interstate on one of the bridges. As we cross the bridges, I find myself thinking. Could I do it? Is it hard? Did he have to work up the nerve?

They say when you jump, there’s no feeling of falling. Maybe he just leaned forward and fell into the smokey blue-green air.

©2002 by Maureen F. McHugh. Originally published in Polyphony , edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maureen F. McHugh was born in what was then a sleepy, blue collar town in Ohio called Loveland. She went to college in Ohio, and then graduate school at New York University. She lived a year in Shijiazhuang, China. Her first book, Tiptree Award winner China Mountain Zhang was published in 1991. Since then she has written three novels and a well received collection of short stories, Story Prize finalist Mothers & Other Monsters. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has attempted to sell her soul to Hollywood.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Trip Trap

Kevin J. Anderson and Sherrilyn Kenyon | 4210 words

He huddled under the bridge and hid from the world outside, as he had done for as long as he could remember . . . No, he could remember a time before that, but he didn’t like those thoughts, and he buried them away whenever they appeared.

The bridge was old and unimpressive, long ago marred by spray-painted graffiti, mostly faded now. The county road extended from an Alabama state highway and crossed over a creek that was more of a drainage ditch, overrun with weeds and populated with garbage tossed out from the occasional passing car. Brambles, dogwoods, and milkweed grew tall enough to provide some shelter for his lair.

Skari lurked in the shadows next to piled cans, mud-encrusted debris he had hauled out of the noisome drainage ditch, a bent and discarded child’s bicycle (struck by a car). A stained blanket provided very little warmth and no softness, but he clung to it nevertheless. It was his. All the comforts of home.

He had a shopping cart with a broken wheel, piled high with the few possessions he had bothered to keep over . . . over a long time. He hunched his back against the rough concrete abutment, shifting position. The dirt and gravel beneath him was a far cry from the grassy, flower-strewn meadow he sometimes saw in his dreams. He didn’t belong in meadows anymore—just here in the shadows, standing watch at the nightmare gate. He had to guard it. Skari wouldn’t leave his post.

The tall milkweed rustled aside, and he looked up at the freckled face of a skinny little girl. “I see you there,” she said. “Are you a troll?”

Skari tensed, half rose from his crouch. Many layers of tattered and filthy clothing covered his skin, masked his monstrous features. The girl just blinked at him.

“What are you doing here?” When he inhaled a quick breath, through the humidity and the odors of the drainage ditch, he could smell the little girl. The tender little girl.

“My brother says you’re a troll, ’cause trolls live under bridges. You’re living under a bridge,” the girl said. “So, are you a troll?”

Yes, he was, but she didn’t know that. In fact, no one was allowed to know that. “No. Not a troll,” he lied.

She smelled tender, savory, juicy.

“Come closer.”

The girl was intrigued by him, but she hesitated. She was smart enough for that at least.

Skari squeezed his eyes shut and drove his head back against the concrete abutment of the bridge. Again. The pain was like a gunshot through his skull, but at least it drove away the dark thoughts. Sometimes it just got so lonely, and he got so hungry here. He’d been thinking about eating children, tasty children . . . thinking about it altogether too much.

With a crash through the underbrush, a boy came down the embankment. Her brother. He looked about nine, a year or two older than the girl. Both were scrawny, their clothes hand-me-downs but still in much better condition than Skari’s. The children did have a raggedness about them, though, a touch of loss that had not yet grown into desperation. That would come in time, Skari knew, unless he ate them first.

Next to his sister, the boy made a grimace and said with a taunting bravery that only fools and children could manage, “I think you’re a troll. You smell like a troll!”

Skari leaned forward, lurched closer to the edge of the shadow, and the children drew back, but remained close, staring. “Methinks you smell yourself, boy.”

Rather than hearing the threat, the boy giggled. “Methinks? What kind of word is methinks?” He added in a singsong voice, “Methinks ‘methinks’ is a stupid word.”

Skari grumbled, ground his teeth together. His gums were sore. He picked at them with a yellowed fingernail. No wonder witches ate children. It was sounding like a better and better idea to him. His stomach rumbled.

He wanted to lunge out from the gloom, but he knew the nightmare gate was there somewhere behind him, just waiting for him to let down his guard. Skari had been assigned here to stand watch, sentenced to stay here.

For many centuries, evil had bubbled up from the depths of the world, and the nightmare gates through which demons traveled always appeared underneath bridges. Skari couldn’t leave his post, had to stay here and protect against anything that might come out. It made no sense to him why a vulnerable spot might appear under this small county-road bridge in northern Alabama, but it was not for Skari to understand. He hadn’t felt the evil gate in some time, although there was plenty of evil in him.

“How long have you been there, mister?” asked the girl.

“Longer than you’ve been alive.”

A car peeled off the highway and drove along the county road. Its engine was loud and dyspeptic, one tire mostly flat so that as the car crossed the bridge overhead, it made a staccato trip-trap-trip-trap-trip-trap.

“What’s your name?” the boy asked, as if it were his turn to dare.

His name. Yes, he had a name. Other people had called him by name, laughed with him, even a beautiful maiden who had once whispered it in his ear. But not anymore. He had no friends, no home, just what he clung to under this bridge where he stood guard.

But he did have a name. “Skari.”

“Scary Skari!” the boy shouted, and the girl laughed with him.

“Come closer!” He was so hungry for those children, so anxious to emerge into the sunlight again, even though it would cause him pain, make him twist and writhe. Skari grew ill from the very thought. It might be worth the pain, though, just for a bit of freedom . . . or maybe just for a taste of fresh meat.

“Billy! Kenna! Leave the poor man alone.”

The two children whirled, startled. They looked as if they’d been caught at something.

Their mother came up, a woman on the edge of thirty, her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore no makeup, but her face was washed clean. Her clothes also had that worn look to them.

“He’s a troll, Ma—he lives under a bridge,” said the girl, Kenna.

“He smells,” said Billy.

The mother looked mortally embarrassed, rounded up the two as she peered under the bridge where Skari huddled with all his possessions. “I am so incredibly sorry they disturbed you. What can I say?” She hauled the children out of the weeds, maybe to keep them safe from him. “They both flunked home training, but it wasn’t from lack of effort on my part.”

She sounded conversational, a forced friendliness, as if she felt they had something in common.

“Why does he live under a bridge, Ma?” Kenna asked.

Skari was startled to see the woman hesitate. A bright sheen of tears suddenly appeared in her eyes. “Just be thankful we don’t live there.” He heard the unspoken yet in her voice.

“It’s all right,” Skari said. “They weren’t bothering me.” His stomach growled, but not loudly enough for anyone else to hear. “I’ve been called worse than smelly . . . and that by my own family.”

“Well, I appreciate your understanding. I’m Johanna. It was nice meeting you.”

She seemed uncomfortable, backing down the embankment, protecting her children—and good thing. She didn’t want them talking to strangers, especially ones who hid under bridges. Especially trolls.

The air was full of the whine of insects, laden with ozone. Overhead, dark thunderheads clotted. If a downpour came, it would make the humidity more tolerable for a while.

“We need to get back to the car, kids,” Johanna said. “It’s the only shelter we’ve got.”

“I don’t want to go back and sit in the car, Ma! It’s hot.”

“Been there for days. There’s nothing to do,” Billy added. “When are we gonna keep driving?”

“As soon as we get gas money. Somebody’ll come by.”

Whenever Skari saw people, they were from the cars that stopped at the rest area on the highway next to the bridge. It had beige metal picnic tables, trash cans, running water, restrooms, and not much else. Not even traffic. Skari had seen vehicles come and go, and most of them didn’t stay long, but now he remembered a rusted station wagon piled with belongings. It had been there a while. He thought he’d heard a loud muffler, a struggling engine, tires crunching gravel, doors slamming—two nights ago? Johanna and her children probably had a handwritten sign on a scrap of cardboard asking for help with gas money or food.

Skari tried to remember how to make conversation. Some part of him didn’t want the family to go away not yet. “Are you having trouble, ma’am?”

“No . . . yes . . . maybe.”

“Which is it?”

“All of the above. But it’s my problem. Don’t trouble yourself.”

Skari glanced behind him, sensed the nightmare gate. But the barrier was strong, stable—as it had been for many years. Nothing was trying to get through right now. He ambled closer to her, taking comfort in the thunderclouds that muted the afternoon sunlight.

“We don’t got a home no more,” Kenna said. “The mean man made us leave.”

“What mean man?”

Their mother let out a heavy sigh. “We were evicted. I lost my job a year ago and haven’t been able to find another one. I used up my savings, and we’re trying to make it to Michigan where my cousin lives.”

“Michigan?” He didn’t have much familiarity with maps anymore, but he did understand that Michigan was a long way from northern Alabama.

“We’ll manage somehow,” the mother said. Fat raindrops started to strike the ground. “We just need a little to get by, step by step. If we make it to Michigan, we can have a fresh start.” Her expression tightened, as if she had forgotten about him entirely. “We’ll find a way to survive.”

Before he could stop himself, Skari blurted out, “It’s not so bad. You and the girl could live off the fat of the boy for at least three days.”

Johanna’s eyes widened and she drew back, startled. Billy thought it was a joke and he nudged his sister. “They wouldn’t want me anyway. Girls are the ones made out of sugar and spice and everything nice.”

Skari’s stomach rumbled. “Don’t believe too many fairy tales.”

The rain began falling in earnest, thick drops pattering and hissing all around them like whispered laughter. Johanna grabbed the two children. “Come on, back to the car.” She flashed a glance over her shoulder, then ran with a squealing Kenna and Billy off to the rest area.

Skari went back under his bridge, took up his post at the long-sealed nightmare gate, and watched the world as the rain washed the scent of children from the air.

• • • •

Water ran down the side of the bridge, trickles turning his dank and gloomy lair into a soupy mess. Skari just huddled there. The bugs seemed to enjoy it, though. Even after the storm stopped, leaving only leftover droplets wrung out from the sky, he heard frogs wake up in the creek. Something splashed in a puddle farther downstream. It wasn’t yet full dark, but the clouds hadn’t cleared.

All the burbling background noise masked the sound of stealthy footsteps, and the fresh rain covered the girl’s scent until she appeared. “Mister Skari, are you hungry?”

He was startled. The appetite became ravenous within him. Was she taunting him? He could lunge out right now, grab her before she could run, use his dagger to break her up into delectable pieces, roast her meat over a fire and have a feast. But after the rain, he’d never be able to build a fire. No matter, he was hungry enough to eat her raw.

Skari slammed his head against the abutment again to drive away the thoughts. No, no! The hungers, the dark desires had always been gnawing in him, but he could fight them back. He could . . . he could!

Kenna extended a rumpled white paper sack. “I brought hamburgers. Do you like fast food?”

No, I don’t like fast food. I want something slow enough I can catch! “Hamburgers?” he asked, his voice a croak.

“Somebody gave them to us at the rest area. They’re leftovers. Mostly good, but the fries are cold and soggy. I wanted to offer you the last one. Ma doesn’t know I’m here.” She extended the sack closer, and with a quick movement he might have been able to snatch her wrist. “It’s still fine. Only a bite taken out of it.”

With a sense of wonder, Skari took the sack and pulled it open. An explosion of wondrous smells struck him in the face. His mouth watered. He was so hungry!

He stuffed the burger into his mouth, fished around with his paws in the bottom of the bag to grab every small, withered French fry. “Thank you,” he said, his words muffled around the food. Tears stung his eyes.

He remembered feasting with some of the other warriors, a delicious banquet thrown by the victorious lord after a particularly long and bloody battle. They had slain countless scaly demons that day, driven them back through the nightmare gate and barricaded it under a stone bridge. Skari remembered how much blood there was in the air on the battlefield, how the smoking black demon blood had a sour acid smell, unlike the vibrant freshness of the roasted boar in the lord’s fire pit, unseasoned meat shimmering with grease. He and his fellow foot soldiers had eaten the celebratory feast, drinking the lord’s best wine and his cheapest ale. It was all so delicious!

That was before Skari had failed, before he had been cursed . . . before he’d been given this sacred duty.

He finished the food now, licked his crusted lips, and straightened, searching for his scraps of pride and memory as desperately as he looked for more fries.

“Is this your stuff?” Kenna was rummaging in his shopping cart, moving aside the piled possessions he had gathered over the years, decades . . . centuries.

He sucked in his breath. He didn’t dare let her find his weapons, the spell-sealed dagger. “Get away from there!” The girl jerked back. “You shouldn’t be here. Go back to your mother, your family.” He raised himself up, and Kenna looked awed and terrified as Skari grew and swelled, an ominous lurching shape under the bridge. She backed away, stumbling in the weeds. Skari lowered his voice, speaking more to himself than to her. “You have a family. Don’t forget that.”

She ran back to their forlorn station wagon, and he heard her crying, which made his heart heavy. Another stone of guilt, another failure, another thing to atone for. But Kenna had her brother, her mother . . . a mother who actually cared for her children.

Skari’s mother hadn’t been like that. When he’d run away to fight in the demon wars, he’d been cocky, full of false bravado, sure that no nightmare monster breaking out of hell could be worse than the shrewish woman who had beaten him, starved him at home.

He’d been so wrong about that.

For a while, his comrades had become his family. The clerics had blessed them all, the noblemen had armed them, the wizards provided magical talismans with blades dipped in bloodsilver that could strike down demons.

In the first two engagements, Skari had been out of the fray, far from where the monsters boiled out from beneath the bridge. Warlords and armed warriors had fought the slavering demons, while clerics and wizards struggled to seal and barricade the nightmare gate. Skari was terrified, but uninjured—and the war went on.

In the third battle, though, when the fanged and clawed monsters turned, charging into the pathetic group of Skari and his friends, he watched his best comrade, Torin, die. Torin was a baker’s boy from the same village—they’d run off together—and Skari saw the demons tear him apart, twisting Torin’s arms and legs from his torso like the bones from a well-roasted quail carcass. Another demon had bitten off Hurn’s head. The long-haired tanner’s apprentice had feminine features and a cocky smile, and the fanged monster had opened its hinged jaws, engulfed the boy’s entire head, bit down, then spat it out amid a gout of foul breath. Hurn’s head had struck Skari right in the chest.

He didn’t remember dropping his sword or running screaming past all the other soldiers. Many hundreds of human soldiers had died that day, but the demons were driven back at an incredible cost of brave blood. Skari, though, was captured by the lord’s men, found to be a coward, sentenced to be executed by a headsman’s ax. But he was given a choice—a choice that he hadn’t known was so terrible. The wizards offered him the opportunity to become the guardian of a sealed gate, to be made immortal, to stand watch in case the nightmare hordes ever tried to break free again.

Babbling, Skari had agreed. He dropped to his knees weeping, begging them to make him a guardian. He had not known that choice would be worse than simply dying.

Skari had lost his family, his friends, everyone and everything. He had been alone for centuries, moved from bridge to bridge when it was deemed necessary, when a new vulnerable spot appeared anywhere in the world.

“Your job is to protect mankind,” the wizard had said.

The lord who stood before him had a grim, heartless face. He had lost a hand in the last battle. He had seen Skari run in terror from the monsters, and Skari knew he had earned his isolated eternity. His crime was not so great that he deserved hell itself, but bad enough for him to be sentenced to this purgatory. His fate, his job, was to protect humans against evil . . . even though his close proximity to the nightmare gates had twisted him, too.

He could never let the evil escape again. He couldn’t let it get to Johanna and her two children.

He turned to the bridge wall behind him, where he could sense the simmering gate. It had been quiet, silent, but he dare not let his guard down. Dare not leave, dare not have hope. He clenched his filthy, scabbed fist and hammered against the hard wall. “I hate you!” Nothing was worse than to be trapped alone where you didn’t want to be.

While he kept the nightmare gate guarded, he thought of Kenna and Billy, homeless, penniless, cast out by a “mean man,” vulnerable to human predators and unkind fate. Even if the demon wars were over, the darkness of human society was heartless, too. At least the demons were obvious enemies, and they could be defeated.

His thoughts kept going to the woman and her children. How could he defend against the troubles Johanna faced? The family was like the one he’d never had. Maybe that was another part of his punishment: to feel such helplessness after he’d begun to sense a connection. But what could he do?

We just need a little to get by, step by step, Johanna had said. If we make it to Michigan, we can have a fresh start.

As he thought of them, he sighed. They were the ones he fought for. But if he simply ignored their very real, though not supernatural, plight, he might as well let the evil behind the nightmare gate eat them. It would be like running away from the battlefield, a coward again.

He went to his cart and dug through his cluttered possessions, the detritus and treasures piled and packed there . . . until he found the last few things he had from his original life in another time, another world: a thick gold medallion, one small ring, and a handful of silver coins, spoils from his first battlefields. The trinkets had amounted to a fortune even then, an even greater one today.

For centuries, he’d kept them safe. Now, they would help a young mother and her children reach safety.

It was full night, and the nightmare gate seemed strong, stable. He sensed no whispers of evil back there, only emptiness. But he did feel the pain and the need of Johanna and her children.

Halfhearted rain began to fall as he trudged to the parking lot of the rest area. The station wagon was dark, closed up for the night as the family huddled there for shelter, safer and warmer than under a bridge. It was the only vehicle there. A single white mercury light shed a pool of illumination over the picnic tables. A metal sign peppered with divots from shotgun pellets said NO OVERNIGHT PARKING-STRICTLY ENFORCED. But no one had bothered to enforce it for days.

Shambling forward, a looming shadow surrounded by deeper shadows, Skari approached the driver’s-side window and thumped on it. He heard a startled gasp from behind the glass, the children stirring. He saw the glint of the mother’s eyes; she was concerned, ready to fight. In the darkness, they would be able to discern his gargantuan size, but unable to see his ugly twisted features, his scabrous skin.

He held up the pouch. “Didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am. I just thought this would help you get on your way.”

Johanna rolled down the window just enough for him to push the pouch through. She took it, and he turned, not wanting to speak with her, not waiting for her to see what he had given them.

Skari ambled back into the night, hurrying before any demons could discover the unguarded nightmare gate, before he would have to endure the mother telling him thank you.

• • • •

No more than an hour later, as he sat in the damp gloom of his lair, Johanna, Billy, and Kenna appeared under the bridge, walking closer. They weren’t afraid of him. The mother held the sack with the medallion, the ring, the old coins. “I can’t take this.”

“Yes, you can. Those things do me no good, but for you they can make the difference. Buy yourself a new chance.” He tried to remember how to soften his words with humor. “It should keep you from having to eat the boy for at least a week”

She laughed, and her brow furrowed. “It’ll keep us from living under a bridge.” The boy and girl gathered closer, and they all looked at Skari. Johanna’s face was tight, and he saw tears in her eyes. “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for us. Thank you.”

The little girl burst forward, threw herself against him, and hugged him tight. “You’re not a monster.”

Billy nodded and said strangely, “You’re saved. I’m glad we didn’t have to kill you.”

No sooner had the boy spoken than pain shot into Skari’s body. He hissed as it burned through him, screaming through his muscle fibers. His skin began to boil and discolor. Underneath his layers of old, crusted clothing, his body twisted in a spasm. He bent over and threw himself against the bridge abutment, his mind ringing with terror.

Were these people escaped demons? Had they come here to attack him? He staggered to his shopping cart, grabbed it. He had to get the bloodsilver dagger, defend himself, defend the world—but the cart crashed to one side.

Unable to stand the pain, Skari doubled over, dropped to the muddy, garbage-strewn ground

And shrank. Confused, Skari looked at hands that were no longer gnarled ugly paws. They were hands again. Human hands. He flexed his arms, pushed himself to his feet.

The mother and children stood before him, watching, but their eyes didn’t look evil. In fact, they seemed glad . . . relieved.

“The demon wars were over long ago,” said Johanna. “The nightmare gates are permanently sealed, but after all this time, the guardians themselves have become dangerous.”

Billy added, “Not only were you immortal, you became inhuman, too—so close to the darkness that it found a home in you.”

“We’ve been sent to find the last few remaining trolls, to test them,” Kenna said in a voice that did not belong to a little girl. “To see if they need to be destroyed, or if they have remembered human decency and compassion. You, Skari, are one of the last. We were afraid for you.”

Instead of the eyes of a little boy, Billy’s eyes were hard and ancient. “But you convinced even me.”

“You are free now,” Johanna said. “The world is safe from demons . . . and it is safe from you.”

Kenna grinned, and her eyes sparkled. “We release you from your post.”

©2014 by Kevin J. Anderson and Sherrilyn Kenyon. Originally published in Dark Duets , edited by Christopher Golden. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Kevin J. Anderson has published 140 books, 54 of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as unique steampunk fantasy novels Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, written with legendary rock drummer Neil Peart, based on the concept album by the band Rush. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, the Saga of Shadows trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. He has edited numerous anthologies, written comics and games, and the lyrics to two rock CDs. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press.

New York Times and international bestselling author, Sherrilyn Kenyon, is a regular at the #1 spot. With legions of fans known as Menyons (thousands of whom proudly sport tattoos from her series and who travel from all over the world to attend her appearances), her books are always snatched up as soon as they appear on store shelves. Since 2003, she had placed more than 75 novels on the New York Times list in all formats including manga and graphic novels. Her current series are: Dark-Hunter, Chronicles of Nick, Lords of Avalon, and The League, and her books are available in over 100 countries where eager fans impatiently wait for the next release. Her Chronicles of Nick and Dark-Hunter series are soon to be major motion pictures while Dark-Hunter, Lords of Avalon, and The League are being developed for television. Join her and her Menyons online at SherrilynKenyon.com and www.facebook.com/AuthorSherrilynKenyon.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Assassin’s Secret

Adam-Troy Castro | 5020 words

The world’s greatest assassin lives on a private island. That’s so much a given that you must have known it already. You’ve seen all those movies about master thieves, brilliant scammers, unflappable secret agents, dangerous people who live on their own tropical islands and must be lured into one last job. He was the source of the cliché. You will no doubt track down the earliest manifestations of the plot device, do the math, and croak, “Good Lord, he must be ancient!” He is. Indeed, he was Verne’s original model for Nemo. He had a submarine back then. He later sold it to East Tarawan separatists, less for the cash—as he is by now wealthy enough to rival the world’s most prosperous nations—than to get rid of what he by then considered a white elephant. You will no doubt realize that if he knew Verne he must be the oldest man who ever lived; it will only confuse you if we report that he’s actually number five, three of whom are still living, even if they have nothing to do with this story. Forget I even mentioned them.

He has a private supply of a medicinal herb that accounts for his longevity. It is actually quite easy to grow and you would be finding it on your supermarket shelves now if not for the strenuous weeding effort he undertakes, keeping the world supply down to one isolated ridge inside his island’s central volcano. It’s easier, he reasons, to be the world’s greatest assassin if there’s only one of him; that and the knowledge that he has firebombs set to incinerate the entire crop if anything ever happens to him, keeps the worldwide powers that be from ever trying to seize the bounty for themselves. Generations of the rich and influential have spent their lives coveting what he has, grown old and feeble, and finally crumbled into dust hoping that he’ll relent. Occasionally, just enough to keep their hopes up, he has, though none of the recipients have ever wound up ahead on the deal.

He limits his ambitions to success as the world’s greatest assassin because he’s never had any real interest in conquering the world. He could if he wanted to, and without years spent tearing up the landscape with infantry; he knows the throats that need slitting, the voices that need silencing, the parties that need only his support to rule in his stead. He could eliminate two or three hundred people, tops, and change the course of the millennium. That he hasn’t is because it’s not worth the effort. He lives on a fine island surrounded by turquoise waters, rich with coca and citrus, and possessed of scenic vistas capable of impressing even the most jaded multi-centenarian. He can bathe in a crystal waterfall, dine on foods he grows himself or has imported from the four corners of the Earth, wrestle with wild boars for relaxation, chat with the celebrated guests who he’s ordered to his side and who know they must be scintillating to survive the visit, do a Sudoku, then sleep on a bed so comfortable that for you or I a night’s stay would be like sleeping in zero-g on a satellite orbiting the Earth. He lives an idyllic existence, truly, one that would only be ruined by having to sit at a desk in some palace and delegate his iron rule over continents; and even as he limits his death-doling activities to less than an hour a day, he is wealthier every night than he was at dawn, so you could say that he’s developed a system that works for him.

He has a particular method he’s preferred of late, but he can rob any person of breath at any time using any device he chooses. For years he preferred the rapier. Then he became a master of pistols. For some time, he limited himself to bare hands, and then, because that was too easy, his index finger; a single touch to the base of the neck, accompanied with a certain vibration known only to him, that causes the cerebrum to explode. He knows the one place where a human being cannot survive a paper cut, and for a period of six months used it exclusively, as it’s between two of the smaller toes and part of the challenge was to persuade his targets to remove their shoes. On one very strange occasion he used a trained hummingbird, and on another he utilized a carefully constructed insult. What he doesn’t know about killing people is not worth knowing. He is also achingly aware that expertise on his level is gratuitous. The human animal is so easy to kill that any half-assed buffoon can do it, as an unconsidered crime of passion; any visit to a penitentiary will tell you that you don’t exactly need a genius. The world’s greatest assassin sometimes peruses tabloids to torture himself, the way one does, and whenever he reads about one moronic homicide or another he grimaces in the manner of a great painter who witnesses the art-gallery success of a guy who becomes a millionaire by throwing tomatoes at canvases. He respects his craft. He believes it an important craft. He hates the amateurs but thinks what the great painter does: What are you going to do?

Right now he is in a lazy phase and can kill people with a single stroke of his pen. It is a very special pen that has been imbued with some special features, and so he does not need to be in the same room or even on the same continent as the objects of his professional attention; all he has to do is draw a line through the target’s name, and know with absolute assurance that wherever in the world that unfortunate individual was, he has just rolled his eyes back and fallen over, dead. The mechanism behind this dark miracle takes up four locked rooms in the great assassin’s basement. Agents of numerous governments have broken in, over the years, slipped past corridors crowded with security systems, and ultimately dropped dead just as they drew near their prize. The world’s greatest assassin sleeps lightly, and has an exhaustive collection of all the world’s telephone directories.

The world’s greatest assassin doesn’t work for any particular government and is not beholden to any particular lobby. He doesn’t have to take any job if he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t suffer the angst you’ll find in some professional killers well below his station, who might be the best at their particular specialties but will, inevitably, at some point, be handed an assignment so dirty that it offends even their sensibilities, requiring them to turn against their employers and their colleagues and redeem themselves with bloody massacres of the legions they were working alongside earlier in the week. You wouldn’t think that was the kind of situation that came up often but, really, if it’s happened once, it’s happened a thousand times. Many’s the professional killer who’s been ordered to off the one person capable of getting past a conscience scabbed over by time and circumstance; many’s the savage criminal empire that collapsed in flames with its primary assassin staggering off into a fresh dawn, holding the hands of the eight-year-old girl who smiled at him in just the right way. You’ve likely heard the stories. They’re accurate. It happens all the time. The world’s greatest assassin is aware that this has been the downfall of any number of lesser artisans in his craft and has therefore structured his business and streamlined his methods so that he will never have to do what so often happens, sacrifice everything to save the one person he’d never kill. Since developing his current method and instituting his current rules, he has never had to face the pleading eyes of anybody he’s been asked to eliminate, or carry out any other contracts that he finds morally or aesthetically objectionable. He retains the right of refusal, and more, specifies that if he doesn’t approve, he will terminate those who seek to hire him instead. It is a profound measure of the respect people have for him that he still gets all the business he wants.

Every constituency that’s put him on retainer comes to him once every ninety days. They don’t all come on the same day. That would be silly, not to mention unpleasant, given how enthusiastically they target each other. It’s staggered. The great nations of the Earth get one day apiece: one for the United States, one for North Korea, one for Great Britain, and so on. Together, their business takes up about three weeks. The five weeks after that are followed by visits from the lesser nations. (You would be surprised how many people Belgium needs assassinated.) Then come the political parties and the various financial interests; and then the criminal organizations, who come to him for those particular circumstances where, for whatever reason, they can’t just do what they would normally do and slaughter each other with the people they’ve trained in-house. The Mafia, the Yakuza, the Russian Mob, the Cartels, Amblin Entertainment—they all visit, each sending a single representative, disgorged blinking and apprehensive from the bowels of whatever pleasure cruiser ties up in the bay, and then climbs the one hundred and thirty obsidian steps carved from verdant jungle to the polished floors of the great assassin’s foyer. They always arrive drenched with sweat, and not just because they tend to arrive at the height of the day, beneath a blinding tropical sky; after all, on some days, it’s raining. But they all know that they are about to ask a favor of the deadliest man who ever lived, and that he does not much cotton to having his time wasted.

It needs to be said that not everybody who arrives is a supplicant from the powerful and connected. The world’s greatest assassin is nothing if not democratic. Two weeks out of that ninety days go to ordinary, unremarkable people who he has identified as having persuasive reason to want another human being dead. They are told who has noticed them and they arrive no more fearful, no more hopeful, than those with the Presidents of nations on speed-dial. You will find among this group grim-faced young women sporting swollen jaws and black eyes, very small children who don’t seem to see the path before them so much as some other terrible sight that dominates their horizon regardless of what cardinal direction they face, convicts still clad in the uniforms of their particular penal institutions who lick their lips hungrily as they glance about furtively in search of some valuable to steal or more likely some black hole in which to hide, men with wild eyes and extravagant beards who never stop muttering to themselves even as they make their way up the slope—in short, random individuals from among the world’s billions, some of whom are here for good reasons and some of whom are here for reasons not so good, some of whom have come to their homicidal ambitions for wholly bleak and rational reasons, and some of whom are just insane. You will find among this group people who want their older siblings killed for sins committed in childhood, people who have had their lives torn apart by injustice and need the authors of all their suffering punished, people who only think their boss is a real asshole, people who believe conspiracy theories, and specialty publishers upset about the distribution of genre awards. They all arrive, clutching the one small bag they’ve been permitted to bring with them, and they all arrive mouthing the names of the one person or the five people or at times hundreds of people who, once dead by the whim of the world’s greatest assassin, will make their existence on this planet so much better.

One at a time, whether messenger from a king or envoy from crime syndicate or child soldier from one of the world’s worst places, they climb the stairs and find themselves at the foyer, a grand entranceway into the heart of the island’s central mountain, open to the elements but suspiciously clear of opportunistic insects or other fauna, that narrows as they penetrate deeper until it becomes a corridor to the rooms where they will spend the night. Their host, they are told, even if they have been here before, only holds office hours between eight and nine AM, local time. Tonight they will have their choice of meals, any diversions they request, including some that are certainly illegal wherever they come from, and a comfortable night’s sleep in a bed as fine as his own; tomorrow they will be ushered into his company to give him the name or names of the people they wish him to kill; and in between, all that will be asked of them is due consideration over whether this is really something they want.

The envoys from the powerful enjoy the amenities. They swim in the pool or they pore through the library or they inject themselves with substances from the recreational pharmacy the great assassin keeps stocked for visitors. Some request more intimate services from the staff. The great assassin keeps a small army of sex workers, male and female, on retainer. None of them consider themselves exploited. Theirs is a profession justly known for corrupting innocents and destroying souls, but they have all stumbled into a sure thing, here: a high salary, a six-month employment contract, the assurance that they will never have to agree to anything they wouldn’t have been happy to do anyway, followed by a pension that is more money than any of them ever expected to earn. If any of them are mistreated at any time, the offending client becomes the recipient of a hash-mark from the great assassin’s pen; and this is applied without mercy, even to visiting heads of state. There is a rather accomplished, famous man in the headlines right now. You know his name. You think him obnoxious, even evil. He has been to the great assassin’s island ten times. He has never gotten laid there. He complained about this a grand total of once. The great assassin, listening from his chair, merely raised an eyebrow. The figure you know sank into a strangled silence. You would feel a great satisfaction if you knew the name. Given how despicable he is, you would also wonder why the great assassin didn’t see fit to finish the job, but it’s only a matter of time. The Great Assassin hates entitled loudmouths.

The envoys from the powerful include many who have been here more than once, and so they use the amenities; the charity cases, the nobodies, the civilians who until recently did not know that the great assassin existed and who are still boggling over the strange turns their lives have taken, tend to more humble pursuits. A few wander the public areas with dazed expressions, like cave-dwellers transported to Asgard. And why wouldn’t they? Their humble lives have been interrupted, their helplessness in the face of perceived injustices rendered an instant fiction by the momentary gift of his attention. For some it is like the very planetary surface they stood on vanished beneath their feet, leaving a straight drop between them and the molten core far below. Of these, a number will decide that they do not want to bear the moral weight of murder by proxy, and will forego their meeting with the world’s greatest assassin, instead heading straight down to the dock to take the first boat out and return to a life where they will have to endure the target of their enmity, the way so many of us do. Still others will spend the evening restless, dwelling on the injustices they’ve suffered, the hatred that has deformed their lives without reason. If driven by revenge, as so many of them are, they will wear every minute like an additional burden upon their souls. They will tremble like people whose insides have become infested with ants. A few will erupt in rages. Some will be so vile in their behavior to everyone around them that it will be no surprise to anyone but themselves when their eyes roll back in their heads and they fall to the tiles, dead, while elsewhere in the great assassin’s fortress the master of the house will put his pen back in its holder and tell the servants that it’s okay to let him sleep late.

There was the case of one young woman from a modest background, who walked with her chin lowered and hands tightly clasped together over her collarbone, as if only that posture would prevent her heart from leaping out of her chest. She spoke only when spoken to and then in soft whispers, her very demeanor an apology for being present. When told that the great assassin would not be seeing her until the morning, she asked if there was a place where she could pray. She was told that the great assassin’s home contained no chapels but that there were terraces which offered a fine view of the setting sun. Shown to one of these, she stood at the waist-high wall and faced the glittering sea, her eyes tearing but her expression otherwise stony. She did not pray. Her lips moved, but it was not praying. She may have been speaking to the person whose name she intended on giving the great assassin, or some other party long dead; perhaps one was responsible for the other. As the sun set, a cooling breeze whipped her amber curls around her cheeks. Then she turned and, refusing the meal offered by a servant, went alone to bed. In the morning she went before the great assassin and told him that while she would not be a party to killing, not even when she hated the name she’d brought more than she loved life, she did have one lesser request that only he could grant. He asked her what she wanted, and she answered. It was not a murder. It was not any kind of attack on the party she’d come here to end. The world’s greatest assassin considered her request for a few seconds and said that yes, it was within his power. And for the first time a smile, broad and brilliant, bloomed on her face. It turned out that she was quite beautiful. But no one knows what that gift was or what ever happened to her, and nothing this unusual has ever happened again.

The great assassin’s house enforces a curfew. All guests and all staff are confined to their quarters after midnight. This is enforced. It is not enforced in the way that the great assassin could, if he wanted. People who have gotten lost on the property but are still rushing back to their rooms when the midnight hour approaches do not stiffen and fall down dead, on the last chime. Nor are they banished first thing in the morning and forbidden from returning. The great assassin does understand that people make mistakes. He also requires common consideration. He likes silence after midnight. If the offense is a willing one, he mentions it, disapprovingly, at the onset of the meeting. Because he is who he is and because he has the voice he has, some offenders collapse in terror. Others just babble apologies. It is a small thing. It is never a deciding factor in the great assassin’s treatment of them. It is just a data point, really; but when you are dealing with the world’s most prolific murderer of human beings, it is never wise to give him cause to regard your appearance with irritation. On the few occasions when his guests carried on so raucously past midnight that the sound penetrated the bowels of his home and made its way to the quicksilver pool on which his bed drifts, he lets them know that they have cost him sleep and that he is not very happy with them at all; that they should carefully consider their recent behavior before asking him anything at all. The wise ones have walked away. Money is a factor in many of his dealings, but so is courtesy. Of course, some of the ones who disturbed his rest and were then apprised of his displeasure do elect to deliver their petition anyway, and not all of these get to live out the day.

The representatives from the world governments tend to bring lists, which is within the rules. Typically, the blinking functionary, fatuous in his own certainty, will hand over a sizeable sheaf of paper with as many as a thousand names, sometimes arranged by alphabetical order and sometimes by preference. There is never any attached intelligence. The greatest assassin in the world does have his own sources of information, exhaustive to a degree that shames those who have spent their days huddled over wiretap transcripts in buildings with many offices. He will sigh and he will bend his attention to the tally before him, pen in hand, and often it is only a matter of a seconds before he draws a line through the first name that meets his mysterious criteria. Boom! Somewhere in the most crowded sector of a city where most malefactors can be confident in their own powers of anonymity, a wanted figure keels over. Another line is drawn. Boom! Another troublemaker hits the dust. Boom again, and again, as the world’s greatest assassin selects the names whose executions he deems defensible, and delivers unto them that which the petitioning government thinks they deserve. He notably skips names, too; often the same individuals whose names he passed over on previous visits, who turn up again and again because the people who make these lists feel that they have nothing to lose by hoping that he changes his mind. There are visits when no new names have been added and the lists end up being handed back to the petitioning government’s representative, practically unmarked; and there are also days when one particular name strikes him as so unwarranted that he turns to the last page and quietly draws a line through the signature of the individual who sent the lot for his consideration. Boom! Seven thousand miles away, down goes the head of another intelligence agency.

The crime syndicates and the corporations also bring lists, but they happen to be shorter; also riskier for the petitioners, as their enmity targets more people the world’s greatest assassin will not lower himself to eliminate. Their petitions go badly one time out of two, a key reason why the boardrooms of so many Wall Street banks, not to mention movie studios, have such dizzyingly rapid turnover.

But the mundane and the ordinary among the invited provide by far the most drama.

A few, the constitutionally irritated, have long tallies, including everybody who’s ever inconvenienced or offended them in their personal lives: the grade-school teachers who flunked them, the lust-objects who rejected them, the employers who at one time or another fired them for cause; also the neighbors who kept them awake with loud music, the dog-walkers who allowed Akitas to sully front lawns, the bankers who repossessed cars they never bothered to make payments on, the relatives whose birthday presents were not extravagant enough, everybody who ever told them to shut up; also, professional athletes whose subpar performances led to gambling losses, singers whose power ballads were overplayed to the point of madness, that asshole in the amber Montego who cut them off heading for the Glades Road exit on I-95. The world’s greatest assassin can peruse some entire lists of this sort and draw only one or two murderous lines before sending the petitioner away, in one fashion or another. He is sad because he knows that people who make lists like this will never be happy, and indeed will never be relieved by a tally of enemies that is now a few names shorter, because that tally is always growing, and sees fresh additions each and every day.

Others arrive bringing only one name. That proposition is more binary. The world’s greatest assassin will peer at the name at the center of the sheet of paper, above the signature that documents how the petitioner is willing to stake his or her own life in exchange for the pleasure of that enemy’s extinction. Because he has his own reliable sources of information, he knows at once why the petitioner wants this particular person gone. Perhaps he was an abuser, remembered from childhood. Perhaps he is an abuser now. Perhaps he’s a business rival. Sometimes it’s a famous name the petitioner has never met personally; among the many who have survived multiple recent requests to the assassin are a President of the United States, a ubiquitous pop star, and the showrunner of a science fiction TV series. In many, many cases they are ordinary people who imagine themselves unoffending, but who possess personal habits that have driven the petitioner to the point of madness: one of these, in recent times, being the woman four cubicles over who daily drenches herself in a scent that drifts through the office air like a miasma, summoning the mental image of entire bee colonies who have gorged themselves on violets and then perished en masse, giving off toxic fumes as they dissolved like staked vampires. The world’s greatest assassin sometimes winces at the received knowledge. He is not incapable of empathy. But he knows well the price of death, having paid the price many times himself, and in those cases where he considers the requests petty or unworthy he looks up and asks the petitioner a single question that he has learned is only a waste of time if asked of the representatives of the rich and powerful: “Are you sure?”

Most of the time they’re sure. Hatred can be such a monument. In which case, the world’s greatest assassin either draws his line through the name they’ve provided, or their own, settling the matter to everyone’s satisfaction.

Other times, their eyes falter and their chin trembles and they answer honestly. No, they confess, they’re not sure. In that case, he asks them if they’d like to talk about it, and surprising themselves, they agree to do just that; starting with halting voices, then gathering strength, often apologizing for how they feel even if it means the world to them. Some voluntarily arrive at a never mind. Others, the genuinely wounded, testify about their ravaged lives and reiterate that they cannot go on as long as the owner of the proffered name remains unpunished. Sometimes they have a case; sometimes they do not. Either way, the world’s greatest assassin thanks them for being so honest, and then makes his decision. He is just as likely to end the petitioner as he is to end the name on the petition, or, for that matter, to leave both breathing at the end of the day. On some of these days, he walks away from the encounter feeling good about himself, in a way that he rarely does, enjoying for one of the few times in his long life the knowledge that he has been an agent of healing. On others, the only sound from his quarters is weeping. He has lived long enough to know that some things in life are unfair, and that there is no alternative to just accepting them, even when we know they’re unfair.

There is one thing that has never happened, to date: not once, though the greatest assassin in the world has long known that it’s only a matter of time. Someday, perhaps tomorrow and perhaps a thousand years from now, he will go to the chamber where he receives all his current and potential clients, and will find one of the many ordinary people whose petitions provide him with both his greatest challenge and greatest job satisfaction. That petitioner will hand over his sheet of paper, and upon reading it the world’s greatest assassin will find the one thing he’s always dreaded, his own name. He will know at once why that name is written there: perhaps a dead parent, a dead child, a dead sibling, a loved one still alive who is shattered by grief at the loss of someone else erased by the assassin’s pen; perhaps a celebrated figure who the petitioner admired and venerated and who was taken because of the single-minded hatred of someone else; perhaps a corrupt system propped up by the great assassin’s elimination of the one person who might have been able to bring it down, on behalf of the powerful who would have preferred to let it stand. Or it might be none of those things. The figure standing before him might simply despise the great assassin for what he is, for what he’s done, for the ongoing loss of life that continues daily and perpetuates so much awfulness, and will forever, just because it’s within one man’s skill set. He might believe that the very words “great” and “assassin” form a terrible and tragic oxymoron, and he might not be impressed by the argument that if the great assassin were to die in the next five minutes, then all the lesser figures who ply his trade would simply have more work to share, the end result being that nothing will change for long. To that he might respond that evil will always be around and it would still be a good thing for one of its manifestations to go away, leaving the world incrementally cleaner in the fleeting interval before more flows in to fill the void.

This is the assassin’s great secret, the one thing he has never told a living soul.

When that happens, he has absolutely no idea what he’s going to do.

©2016 by Adam-Troy Castro.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam-Troy Castro is currently best known for his middle-grade series about the macabre adventures of a very strange, very courageous young boy named Gustav Gloom. The most recent volume, Gustav Gloom And The Four Terrors, was released by Grosset and Dunlap in November of 2013. Adam-Troy’s short fiction has been nominated for 2 Hugos, 3 Stokers, and 8 Nebulas. His novel Emissaries From The Dead won the Philip K. Dick award. Adam lives in Boynton Beach, FL, with his wife Judi and a collection of insane cats.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Red Piano

Delia Sherman | 5920 words

Among my University colleagues, I have a reputation for calm. Whatever the emotional upheaval around me, I can be counted on to keep my head, to make plans, to calculate the cost and consequences, and then to act. If they also say that I live too much in my head, that I lack passion and, perhaps, compassion, that is the price I must pay for being one of those still waters that runs much deeper than it appears.

It is perhaps no surprise that I remained single all through my younger years. No male who shared a classroom with me ever asked me on a date, although some were glad to debate with me over endless cups of coffee and too-sweet muffins in smoky little cafés near the University. My discipline was archaeology, my area of concentration the burial customs of long-dead societies, my obsession the notion of a corporeal afterlife, rich with exotic foods and elaborate furniture, jewels and art and books and servants to wait upon the deceased as they had in life. Wherever they began, all conversations circled back to the same ever-fascinating questions: whether such preparations reflected some post-mortem reality, or whether all the elaborated pomp of preservation and entombment were nothing but a glorified whistling in the dark of eternity.

In the course of these debates, I gained a reputation for an intensity of focus that discouraged my café companions from seeking more intimate bonds of friendship or romance. I did not mind; my own silent communion with dead worlds and languages gave me intimacy enough.

Thanks to my attention to my studies, I throve in my field, finally rising in my thirties to the position of a Full Professor of Archeology at a prominent University situated in a great city. Armed with the income this position offered me and a comfortable sum left to me by a great-aunt, I set out to look for a house to buy.

It was not an easy quest. In a city of apartment buildings and bland new construction, a detached dwelling of historical interest and aesthetic character is not easy to come by. At last, my realtor showed me an old stable, renovated as a townhouse late in the last century by an eccentric developer. It sat on the market for some time before going to an equally eccentric ballerina, recently retired from the stage. After she had suffered a crippling accident on the circular iron staircase, the stable had come back on the market, where it had remained ever since.

The realtor showed me this property with some reluctance, evincing considerable surprise when I told him that I would take it. Like a man in the grip of leprosy checking each limb in fear of discovering an unsuspected infection, he pointed out the inconvenient kitchen, the Pompeian master-bath, the unfinished roof deck with its unpromising view of a back alley and the sheer brick sides of the adjoining houses, and, worst of all, the grand piano that was attached to the sale and could not, by deed, be destroyed or removed from its position in the darkly paneled living room. Enchanted with the very eccentricities that had scuttled all previous negotiations, I made my offer, arranged for a mortgage, and hired a lawyer to draw up the papers.

I well remember the day I took possession. I’d thought my realtor the kind of small, dark, narrow man who shivers on even the hottest day. But as he handed me the key to the front door, he stopped shivering and smiled the first genuine smile I’d seen on his face.

“Here you are, Dr. Waters,” he said. “It’s all yours. I sure hope you know what you’re getting into.”

I thought this an odd thing to say, but I was too dazed with legal complexities to comment on his choice of words. Not that it would have done any good in any case. Once the papers were signed, so was my fate.

I have said my new house was flanked by larger houses—two mansions of ancient aspect and noble proportions that had shared, in their vanished youth, the stable I now called home. One of these had been refurbished, renovated, and repurposed to a glossy fare-thee-well, losing much of its character in the process. The other was infinitely more charming. There was a vagueness about its soot-streaked brownstone and clouded windows, an aura of fogs and mists that spoke of gaslight and the clop of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, as if it somehow occupied an ancient lacuna in the roar and clatter of the modern city.

Accustomed as I am to keeping to myself and mindful of the ancient city habit of never acknowledging that one has neighbors at all, I did not knock on either door. I moved into my stable, arranged my books and my great-aunt’s antique furniture, my Egyptian canopic jars and Roman armbands, my Columbian breastplates and Hellenic funerary steles in the wide wooden spaces where the horses of my neighbors’ predecessors had drowsed and fed.

I also had the piano tuned. It was of a manufacture unknown to me, an unusual instrument made of close-grained wood stained a deep, ox-blood red, its keys fashioned of a uniform polished ebony. Its tone was resonant and full, more akin to an organ than the tinkling parlor uprights I had played as a girl. It was intricately carved with a myriad of identical faces clustered around its legs and above its pedals and around the music stand. I had lost all interest in practicing the piano when I discovered archeology. But I could not feel settled in my new home until I had not only dusted and waxed all the many whorls and complexities of its ornamentation, but also restored its inner workings to their original state.

After a lengthy and expensive tuning, this was accomplished. To my surprise, the piano continued to unsettle me. Waking in the small hours of the night, grading papers or reading or laboring on my comprehensive analysis of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, I sometimes fancied that I heard it playing a melancholy and meditative concerto. More than once, I crept downstairs, my heart in my throat and a sturdy brass candlestick in my hand, intent on surprising the midnight musician. But on each occasion, I found the living room empty and dark, the piano silent. After a month or more of increasingly disturbed and sleepless nights, I formed the idea that the sounds haunting me must come from the house next door, the house whose antique air had so enchanted me. I decided to break the habit of years and introduce myself to my neighbor with the intention of asking him to remove his piano from the wall it must share with my study, or failing that, to confine his playing to daylight hours.

Accordingly, on my return next day from a seminar in reading papyri, I mounted the six steps of the ancient brownstone and tugged the rusted bell-pull hanging beside the banded oaken door. Deep within the house, a bell tolled, followed by a listening silence. Again I rang, determined to rouse the inhabitants, from sleep if need be, as they had so often roused me. The echoes of the third and last ring had not yet died away when the door opened.

My first impression of Roderick Hawthorne was that he was very beautiful. He was tall, over six feet, and slender as a reed, with long, prominent bones. His forehead was broad and domed under an unruly mass of bronze-dark curls like chrysanthemum petals that rioted over his head and down his long and hollow jaw in an equally unruly beard. His nose was Egyptian in the spring of its nostrils, pure Greek in its high-arched bridge; his eyes were large and dark and liquid behind round gold-rimmed spectacles. His gaze, mildly startled at first, sharpened when it fell upon me, rendering me sufficiently self-conscious that I hardly knew how to begin my complaint.

“Your piano,” I said at last, and was startled when he laughed. He had a laugh as beautiful as his person, deep and musical as an organ’s Vox Humana. Then he said, “At its old tricks again, is it?” and I was lost. His voice was oboe and recorder, warm milk and honey. I could have listened to that voice reading the phone book with undiminished pleasure and attention. He spoke again: “Do come in, Miss . . .?”

I realized that I was staring at him with my mouth ajar, more like a cinema fan in the presence of a celluloid celebrity than an Associate Professor of Archeology at a major American University. “It’s Doctor, actually. Dr. Arantxa Waters.”

“Dr. Waters.” He held out a long hand, the fingers pale and smooth as marble, delicately veined with blue. Cold as marble, too, when I laid my own within it. “I am Roderick Hawthorne,” he said. “Welcome to Hawthorne House.”

The interior of Hawthorne House was as untouched by the modern world as its exterior. The walls were hung with richly figured papers and the windows with draperies of velvet and brocade in crimson, ultramarine, and the mossy green of a forest floor. The furniture was massive, dark, ornamented with every kind of bird and fruit and animal known to the carver’s art. Precious carpets covered the floors, and precious objects crowded every surface not claimed by piles of books. Everything was illuminated by the soft yellow glow of gaslights hissing behind etched glass shades. It would have been perfect, if it hadn’t been for the dust and neglect that lay over it all like a pall. Still, I complimented him on the beauty of his home with complete sincerity.

“Do you like it?” he asked, a touch anxiously. “It’s gone woefully to seed, I’m afraid, since my wife’s death. I suppose I could hire a housekeeper, but the truth is, I hardly notice the mess. And I do value my privacy.”

I felt an unaccustomed color climb my cheeks, shame and irritation combined. “I shall conclude my business quickly,” I said, and explained that his piano playing at night was disturbing my studies. As I spoke, it seemed to me that the intensity of his gaze grew ever more concentrated, so that I could almost imagine my blush rather ignited by the fire of his eye than my own self-consciousness.

“I understand,” he said when I fell silent. “Although I am somewhat at a loss as to the remedy. Come, see for yourself.”

He led me from the parlor, where we had been talking, up a wide and sweeping staircase to the floor above, where he turned away from the direction in which my own house and its study lay, into a room across the landing, illuminated, like the parlor, by gas and oil lamps. The soft golden light showed me a formal music room, furnished with a gilded floor-harp and a cello as well as a brocade sofa, a gallery of shadowy pictures in filthy glass—and a piano, the precise twin of mine, down to the carved heads and the unusual deep crimson stain.

“As you can see,” he said as I stared at the piano, “the sound of my playing is unlikely to carry across the landing and through two brick walls to disturb you in your study. But I do believe that you have been so disturbed.” Observing my look of bewilderment, he gestured towards the sofa. “Sit down, please, and I shall tell you the story.

“You have noticed, of course, that our pianos are a matched pair. Your piano was, in fact, made for the wife of the Hawthorne who built Hawthorne House, not long after she entered it as a bride. In this very room they played duets until her untimely death caused him, in the extremity of his grief, to banish her piano to the stable.”

Feeling I should make some observation, I said, “A very natural response, under the circumstances.”

“Oh no,” Hawthorne said seriously, “he was quite mad. And went madder with time. A sane man might have given the piano to charity or sold it or even caused it to be destroyed. The founder of Hawthorne House had his lawyers draw up an addition to the deed preventing the piano from being moved from the stable or destroyed, in perpetuity, no matter who might come to own the stable or what might be done to it.”

“Your ancestor does seem to have been a trifle eccentric,” I said. “But it was a romantic and morbid age.”

His large, bright eyes dwelt on my face. “You are very understanding,” he murmured, his voice thrilling in my ear.

“Not at all,” I said briskly. “Is there more to the story?”

He seemed to collect himself. “Very little of substance. Yet, a piano with such a history is likely to attract rumors as a corpse attracts worms. Most pertinent of these is that, under certain circumstances, it plays in sympathy with its mate.”

“And do you believe in such rumors?”

“I believe in everything,” Roderick Hawthorne said. Shrugging away his melancholy, he turned a hospitable smile on me. “As long as you are here, will you take a glass of sherry, and hear me play?”

Although I myself place little credence in ghosts and hauntings, it was clear from his nervous hands, his febrile eye, the urgent note in his plangent voice, that Roderick Hawthorne was utterly convinced that the music I was hearing was the result of a species of supernatural possession. Nevertheless, the charms of his person and his voice were such that I accepted both sherry and invitation and sat upon the sofa while he laid his beautiful long hands upon the red piano’s ebony keys and began to play.

How shall I describe Roderick Hawthorne’s playing? I am, as I have said, a woman whose passions are primarily intellectual, whose reason is better developed than her emotions. My host’s music delved into the unplumbed depths of my psyche and brought up strange jewels. The nut-sweet sherry blended with salt tears as I wept unashamedly, drunk on music and the deep rumble of my host, humming as he played.

Afterwards, we sat in the parlor with lamplight playing on Chinese urns and Renaissances bronzes and talked of the subject precious to us both: the wide range of humanity’s response to the ineluctable fact of death. By the time I left him, long after midnight, I was well on my way to a state I had never before experienced and was hardly able to identify. I was infatuated.

In taking leave of me, Roderick proposed that I call upon him soon. “I have no telephone,” he said. “Nor do I often leave my house. I would not like to think that my eccentricity might prevent the deepening of a promising friendship.”

Even in the face of such clear encouragement, I waited almost a week before calling on him again. Out of his presence, I found myself as disquieted by his oddities as charmed by his beauty. I was reasonably sure that the use of gas for household lighting was against all current city building codes. And his superstitious belief in the haunted bonds between our twin pianos and the supernatural origin of the sounds I heard, combined with the fact that he himself was (I presumed) recently widowed and not yet recovered from his loss, made me reluctant to further the acquaintance. Still, there was his playing, and the intoxication of conversation with one whose obsessions so perfectly complemented my own. And there was my own piano, singing softly at the edge of my hearing in the deep of the night, reminding me of the emotions I had experienced hearing him play its mate, and could experience again, if only I should take the trouble to go next door.

Unable to resist longer, I put aside my reservations, rang the rusty bell, and saw again his large, mild eyes, his sweet mouth nested like a baby bird in the riot of his beard, felt his cold, smooth hand press my own, heard his voice like an oboe welcoming me, questioning me, talking, talking, talking with delight of all the things that were closest to my heart.

On this second visit, it seemed to me that the house was cleaner than it had been when I’d first seen it—the hangings brighter, the air clearer. The change was most apparent in the music room, where the piano gleamed a deep crimson and candlelight sparkled off the new-polished glass of the gallery of pictures. When Roderick began to play, I rose from the sofa to examine them.

They were sketches, in pencil or charcoal, of a female figure surrounded by shadowed and threatening shapes. Sometimes she fled across a gothic landscape; more often she sat in intricately rendered interiors that I recognized at once as my host’s parlor and music room, alone save for demonic shapes that menaced her from the shadows. The figure bore only the faintest resemblance to an actual woman, being slender to the point of emaciation, overburdened with dark curly hair inclined to dishevelment, and possessed of eyes stretched in an extremity of terror. It was not until I came upon a head and shoulders portrait, that I realized, with a feeling of considerable shock, that the face gazing out so anxiously from the gilded frame was, when seen in relative repose, very like mine. Had I allowed my hair to grow out of the neat crop I had adopted to tame its natural wildness, lost twenty pounds or so, and assumed clothing over a century out of fashion, there would have been no difference between us.

Behind me, the music modulated into a melancholy mode. “The first Mrs. Hawthorne,” Roderick said. “Drawn not long before her death, by her husband. The others were drawn later. He became obsessed by the idea that demons had sucked the life from her. There are boxes full of such sketches in the attic.”

“They seem a very gloomy subject for a music room,” I commented.

“They have always been here,” he said simply. “I do not choose to move them.”

“And your own wife,” I asked diffidently. “Have you any pictures of her?”

Under Roderick’s long, pale fingers, the ebony keys of the red piano danced and flickered in an unquiet Mazurka. “My wife,” he said precisely, “died some while ago. She, too, was pale, with dark eyes and dark hair. Isabella Lorenzo, who last owned your stable, was of similar coloring. So are you.”

For a moment, I was both frightened and repelled by the intensity of his gaze over the crimson-stained music stand, the throb and tremor of his beautiful voice. I felt that I had intruded unpardonably upon a grief too terrible and private for my eyes. Embarrassed almost beyond bearing, I was on the point of quitting his music room and his house, never to return. But then he smiled, and the tune beneath his fingers grew bright and gay and light. “But all that is past now, lovely Arantxa,” he said softly, “and has nothing to do with you and me.”

Foolishly, I believed him.

The subject of Roderick’s lost wife did not arise again between us, as fearful to me as it must have been painful to him. Nor did I learn anything more of the history of the first Mrs. Hawthorne, my long dead doppelganger. These shadows on his past did nothing to decrease my fascination with him, which only grew more intense as the year faded towards winter.

Over the next weeks, I came by insensible degrees to spend almost every evening in his company. I always went to him; he would not venture even so far from his house as my adjacent stable. No stranger to the terrors that agoraphobia can visit on a sensitive spirit, I did not press him, but returned his hospitality by providing our nightly dinners. An unenthusiastic cook, I provided take-out from one of the local restaurants, but I will never forget the first time I descended to his kitchen in search of a teapot and hot water, only to discover that the stove was wood-fed, the water pumped by hand into the sink, and the milk kept in an icebox chilled by an actual block of ice.

“It has always been that way,” he said when I came up again, defeated by the primitive technology. “I do not choose to change it.”

On subsequent visits, I found the stove had been lit and water pumped ready in the kettle for our nightly cup of tea. Indeed, Roderick showed himself unfailingly solicitous of my comfort. When I complained that I was too tired, on returning home late each night, to keep up with my work, he gave me the room across the hall from the music room as a study. There I would sit, lapped in fur and velvet against the chill, grading papers by gaslight while the glorious waves of Roderick’s music washed over my senses. Often, emotion so overcame me that I would have granted him whatever he might ask, even to those intimacies I could hardly bring myself to contemplate. But every night, when the great clock at the foot of the steps chimed midnight, he would lower the cover, wish me goodnight, and escort me to the door.

I soon became aware of an inconvenient lack of energy. At first I blamed my growing enervation on too little sleep and the extreme stimulation of Roderick’s conversation and music. I confided my state to Roderick, who insisted that I leave at eleven, so that I might retire earlier. “For now that I’ve found you, Arantxa, I cannot do without you. I might have sunk into melancholy altogether, and my house with me, if it had not been for you.”

Indeed, both Roderick and his house had improved since I’d first seen them. Someone had cleaned and dusted, washed and polished everything to the well-cared-for glow that bespeaks a truly dedicated housekeeper. When I asked where he’d unearthed such a jewel, he smiled and turned the subject. I began to sleep longer and for a time, felt a little better. But my classes were a struggle to prepare and my students a constant irritation.

Early in the spring semester, my department chair called me into his office. He was concerned about my health, he said. I seemed languid, forgetful of meetings and deadlines. There had been complaints. It was all very troubling. To silence him, I made an appointment with a doctor at the University Health Services. He subjected me to a series of annoying and expensive tests, and in the end confessed himself no wiser than when he started. He diagnosed me with non-typical chronic fatigue, and prescribed a stimulant.

Roderick laughed when he heard this diagnosis. “Chronic fatigue? Nonsense. You possess more vitality than any woman I have known.” He took my hand and raised it to his lips. “Dear Arantxa,” he murmured, his breath warm on my knuckles. “So strong, so utterly alive. You must know that I adore you. Will you marry me?”

My heart stuttered in my breast with fear or passion—I hardly knew which. His bright and fixed gaze filled my mind and my senses, leaving room for nothing else. Words of acceptance trembled on my lips, but were checked at the last moment by inborn caution.

“You overwhelm me, Roderick,” I said shakily. “I have never thought of marriage. You must give me time to consider your proposal.”

Releasing my hand, Roderick shrank back into his chair. “You do not love me as I love you,” he said, his oboe-like voice clouded with disappointment.

I leaned forward, and for the first time, touched his softly curling beard. “I might,” I said truthfully. “I don’t know. I need to think what to do.”

He nodded, his beard sliding under my fingers. “Then you shall think. But please—think quickly.”

That night, he played the red piano with unsurpassed passion. I lay on the music-room sofa overwhelmed with sound, my arm flung over my eyes to hide my slow, helpless tears. Of course I loved him. I had never found anyone who listened to me as he did, looked at me with such hunger. Why then did I hesitate? In my extreme perturbation, I could hardly find the energy to rise from the sofa, and was forced to accept his arm to support me to the door. “Are you well?” he asked anxiously. “Shall I help you home?”

Knowing what the offer must have cost him, I was deeply moved. “My goodness,” I said, forcing a light tone through my deadly fatigue. “Do I look that bad? No, I’ll be fine by myself.”

“I will see you tomorrow, then,” he said, and for the first time, laid his lips against mine. His kiss, both passionate and cold, excited my nerves, lending me the strength to traverse the short distance to my own door.

I slept fitfully that night. Whenever I fell asleep, I was haunted by a groaning, as of pain unbearable, echoing up the spiral stairs. I would wake with a start and lie quivering in the darkness, ears straining to hear past the beating of my heart. The next day passed in a kind of stupor. I could barely totter down to the kitchen to boil water for tea and recruit faltering nature with soup and toast. By evening, I was simultaneously exhausted and restless beyond bearing. Which was, perhaps, why I found myself sitting on the piano bench.

I had not come near the piano in some time. As I sat before it, I noticed that the little carved faces were familiar. I knew that domed brow, that coolly sensual mouth in its nest of hyacinthine curls. My exhaustion was such that I saw nothing odd in finding Roderick’s visage carved upon his ancestor’s piano. It only inspired in me a desire to touch him, speak to him, draw comfort from him. Impulsively, I raised the cover, lifted my hands to the ebony keys and ran my fingers from treble to bass. If I was far too weak to drag myself to him, perhaps I could touch him through our linked instruments.

Tentatively, I embarked upon a simple song I had learned as a girl. I stumbled at first, and then sense memory took over. My fingers began to move as of their own accord, progressing from the song into a nocturne, and then into improvisation. As I played, I forgot my fatigue, my undone work, even Roderick and his proposal. The music I made lifted me into a realm of beautiful abstraction, spirit without substance, clean and pure and bright. When at last I stopped playing, it was a little after midnight. Strangely, I felt better—tired certainly, but not exhausted. My mind was clearer than it had been for months.

I slept soundly that night, never stirring until early afternoon, when I rose well-rested and able to eat a proper meal and do some real work. When I looked up from my papers, it was far too late to go to Roderick’s. Wanting to recapture that feeling of perfect communion, I sat down once again at the red piano, and rose some hours later, strong, refreshed, and as sure as I could be that I loved Roderick Hawthorne and wanted to be his wife.

The next afternoon, I dressed myself with more than usual care. I brushed out my hair, which had grown during my illness, into a dark cloud that made my face more delicate and white in contrast. I put on a dress I had not worn since college—black velvet cut tight to my hips, the skirt full and sweeping below. I clasped my mother’s pearls around my neck, and thus bedecked, once again rang the bell of Hawthorne House.

No sooner had my hand fallen from the pull than the door opened on a haggard figure I hardly recognized. Roderick Hawthorne’s hair was uncombed, his collar unbuttoned, his cheeks gaunt and his eyes reddened. “Arantxa!” he exclaimed. “I have not slept or eaten in two days, waiting for your answer, fearing what it must be when you did not return.”

My heart contracted with pity. “Oh, my dear.” He smiled at the endearment, the first I’d ever used. “I could not come. I was so tired. And I did need to think.”

“My poor angel. Of course. I’m glad you’re better. And you are here now. It is yes, isn’t it? Your answer?”

Something in his voice—Satisfaction? Triumph?—stifled my agreement on my lips. I smiled, but said nothing.

Dinner was a depressing meal. The dining room was cold, the fire sullen and low, the food indifferent. Both of us avoided the subject most pressingly on our minds, every other topic of conversation an unexpected minefield of references to love or matrimony. At length, we rose from an unaccustomed silence.

“I will not plead for myself,” he said. “Perhaps you will let my music plead for me.” He took my hand; his was colder than ice. As we walked from the dining room to the music room, I noticed that the whole house was cold, neglected, dusty, as though none had swept or polished or built a fire there for weeks rather than the two days I’d been absent. Roderick hurried me up the stairs, and fear grew in me. On the threshold of the music room, I hesitated, searching for some way to excuse myself from a situation grown suddenly intolerable. Roderick’s cold hand grasped mine more tightly, drawing me inexorably towards the red piano and down onto the bench beside him.

The carved faces peered at me from the music stand. It was the first time I had seen them close up, but I was not astonished to discover that they were as like the first Mrs. Hawthorne, like me, as the faces on my piano were like Roderick. In a flash, I understood everything. It utterly defied rational belief, but I could not afford the luxury of disbelief. My very life depended on acting quickly.

I took a deep, calming breath and smiled deliberately into his face. Roderick Hawthorne smiled back, predatory as a wolf, then released me, rubbed his long hands together, and flexed his fingers. He disposed them gently on the ebony keys, and prepared to play me to utter dissolution.

Before he could sound a single note, I seized the heavy wooden cover and slammed it shut on his fingers with all my force.

He screamed like a wild animal, a scream with a snarl in it, rage and pain mingled. Springing to my feet, I ran from the music room, snatching up my cumbersome skirts. Weak and in pain, he was still stronger than I, infinitely older and wise in the terrible sorcery that had animated him so far beyond his natural life. If I fell into his hands, I knew I could not escape him a second time. I ran headlong down the stairs, resisting the impulse to look behind me, knowing he must follow me, clumsy with pain, utterly determined to catch me and drain me of my strength and my life.

Tearing open the door, I stumbled into the open air a step ahead of him, and down the stoop into the alley. I knew that his life must be intimately intertwined with the house he had inhabited for so long. He might not be able to step over the threshold; then again, he might. I could not afford to take the chance.

In the light of a single lamp, my living room seemed calm and homelike. Then I clicked on the overhead, and there was the red piano, squatting beside the stair, oversized, over-decorated, garish, out of place among the beautiful simplicities of my collections.

A scream of rage at the end of the alley sent me flying to the box I kept under the stairs. Screwdriver, hammer, pliers, wire cutter—inadequate tools for the task ahead, but all I had at my disposal. Terror made me strong. I splintered the ebony keys and the music stand with the hammer. An inhuman howling came from the alley. I attacked the carved faces on the legs and case. Something heavy began to slam against my front door, causing it to quiver in the frame. Furiously I hammered at the carved wood, squinting against the splinters stinging my cheeks and chest.

With a great crack, the door burst inwards. I looked up, and there was Roderick Hawthorne, framed in darkness, his face stark in the electric glare. If I had harbored any lingering doubts as to the uncanny nature of the night’s events, I did so no longer. His face was scored and bleeding, his beard ragged and clotted with gore, his eye a bloody ruin, his mouth swollen and misshapen. I glanced down at my hammer, half-expecting to see it smeared with blood. In that moment of inattention, he sprang towards me, gabbling wildly, his beautiful voice raw and ruined, his beautiful hands bruised, swollen, bleeding, reaching for me, for the broken piano keys.

Snatching up the wire cutters, I thrust open the piano lid and applied myself to the strings. One by one I clipped them, in spite of Roderick’s howling and wailing, in spite of his hands clawing at my shoulders as he tried in vain to prevent me from severing his heart strings. As I worked my way down to the bass register, the howling stopped, and I felt only a weak pawing at my ankles. And then there was nothing.

When I completed my task, I turned and saw what I had done. For a moment, a horror lay on my rug, the red and white and black ruin of the man I had loved. And then his flesh deliquesced in an accelerated process of decay as unnatural as his protracted life. A deep groan sounded, as of crumbling masonry and walls, and then my world was rocked with the slow collapse of Hawthorne House, falling in on itself like a house of cards, dissolving, like its master, into featureless dust and rubble.

I was rescued from the wreckage by my neighbor on the other side. He gave me strong coffee laced with rum and chocolate chip cookies for shock and called the police and the fire department. He is neither beautiful nor mysterious, and he made his fortune writing code for a computer game I had never even heard of. He prefers klezmer music to opera and South Park to the Romantics. He reads science fiction and plays video games. We were married in the spring, right after final exams, and moved uptown to an apartment in a modern tower with square white rooms and views across the river. We have no piano, no harp, not even a guitar. But sometimes, in the deep of winter, when the dark comes early and the wind shrills at the bedroom window, I think I can hear the red piano playing, deep and wild and passionate.

©2009 by Delia Sherman. Originally published in Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy and Horror , edited by Ellen Datlow. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Delia Sherman writes stories and novels for younger readers and adults. Her most recent short stories have appeared in Datlow and Windling’s anthology Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells and Jonathan Strahan’s Under My Hat. Her collection of short stories, Young Woman in a Garden, was published by Small Beer Press. She has written three novels for adults: Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove, and The Fall of the Kings (with Ellen Kushner). Novels for younger readers are Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, Norton Award-winning The Freedom Maze, and The Evil Wizard Smallbone. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching, editing, knitting, and cooking. Though she loves to travel, home base is a rambling apartment in New York City with spouse Ellen Kushner and far too many pieces of paper.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Siren Son

Tristina Wright | 6750 words

The day the dragons came, Neal kissed a boy.

This span of months would later be remembered as the Awakening and condensed to precisely three pages in a tenth-cycle history text. Those three pages would lie nestled between twelve pages on the War of the Sea (when the merfolk rose up and attacked the trade ships in retaliation for an attack against their king) and twenty-four pages on the Reconstruction Age (when what was left of humanity tunneled deep into the earth in order to survive after the dragons scorched the sky). Both the War of the Sea and the Reconstruction Age were very fine events on their own—filled with lots of history and quite a few legends—but the Awakening was something else entirely.

Those three pages in a history text would never mention Neal. History texts never wrote about boys with brown skin and ordinary blood. They wrote of boys with porcelain skin and blue blood.

They would also never write about Killian, even though, in Neal’s low-status opinion, they should. Killian with his lips on Neal’s as thousands of dragons clawed their way to the surface of the world, as if the core was never molten rock but a ball of dragons warming the planet from within. The dragons roared, and Killian smiled against Neal’s mouth. In all his eighteen years alive on this little world, Neal had never seen anything more beautiful or more terrifying.

“You came back,” Neal said, the words tumbling out and slurring together with giddiness.

“I want to keep you,” Killian whispered as he ran his nose over Neal’s cheekbone and rubbed his lips against the curve of Neal’s jaw. Neal’s back scraped against the wall, his shirt catching on the crumbling brick covered in fading neon paint that proclaimed salvation for the damned.

The sky glowed orange and red and the gold of Killian’s eyes. It was breathtaking even as fire rained down from the throats of dragons like vengeful angels come to kickstart the apocalypse.

Deme, the City of the Dragon Son, burned as had been foretold in whispered warnings for a century. Deme with its metal and stone buildings scraping the clouds. Deme with its stores of wealth in the sky, with the airships that fought the dragons while people either scattered or accepted their fate.

“I almost didn’t want you to come back to me,” Neal said, swallowing his nerves and grasping at Killian for fear he’d disappear in a burst of flame.

“I promised I would come back for you,” Killian said against Neal’s throat.

“You said you’d come back when the world died.”

Killian pulled away enough to look Neal in the eyes. “We can stop this.”

“This,” Neal repeated.

“The death of the world.”

Their

lips

met

and

the

ground

broke

open

• • • •

When Neal was fifteen, he met the boy with golden eyes.

Every day for the previous five years without fail and in spite of weather, hunger, or injury, Neal had ferried messages all over the metropolis of Deme in exchange for ration credits. He’d walked through the golden gates which separated the rich from the poor, clutching fragile packages for women covered in powder and jewels. He’d scurried through the different markets, his stomach growling at the street carts. He’d dodged pickpockets and police. He’d listened to old men swap stories of dragons and sirens as they drank homemade liquor from battered tin cups. He’d accepted tips in food scraps, worthless chipped coins, and the occasional riddle.

At least most of the populace tried for a tip. The long-robed Dragon worshippers who perched on every street corner had shoved their parchment pamphlets in his face as he tried to scurry by with deliveries. Dragon forbid he had to actually give one of them a message. Their idea of a tip was to tell him he was headed to the belly of the underworld.

In Deme, the Dragon worshipers built their golden temples and congregated weekly. They gave sermons on how the dragons pushed the cities from the earth to give wayward humanity a home. They condemned riches and waste (something Neal didn’t understand given the magnificence of their holy places). Condemned the treatment of the poor (something Neal agreed with), and the airships sullenly shouldering through the clouds (something Neal didn’t agree with). Most days, he’d avoided eye contact and their rotten pamphlets.

Siren Mother worshippers were only a little better. Relegated to the docks and pebbled beaches, they preached against the dragons and warned the ocean would rise and swallow all of mankind. That the sirens of the deep weren’t truly defeated in the War of the Sea. That they simply waited for their moment.

Neal had always smiled his own private, knowing smile at that, his skin prickling pleasantly any time they shouted about the ocean deep and the monsters which lived there.

As he had thrown the useless coins in the massive Dragon Fountain located on the eastern side of the city, he’d sung the familiar prayer under his breath, his thin boot soles slapping the uneven cobbles on the way to his next client.

Dragon Father, fire and smoke
Forgive my sins and your heart I broke
Dragon Son, quell your fire
An’ I’ll live my days and never tire

It was a child’s nursery rhyme, taught to every youngling alongside letters and numbers and the Ages of Time. Neal had learned at least that much before his father perished in the War of the Sea—when the merfolk rose out of the depths and attacked human ships—thus making Neal the man of the house.

At ten years of age, he’d walked out of his home next to the pull of the sea and into the ration office, his quickness and litheness earning him a spot as a messenger and three rations a week. His life had become a monotony at ten and continued in kind for the next five years.

Neal had muttered a new riddle to himself over and over with the rhythm of his stride until he had it memorized, ignoring the smears of color and light as he traversed the same maze of streets again and again and again. Messages never ceased. Things that rattled. Things that rustled. Things that smelled. Things that leaked. Things that broke. Things and letters. Letters and things.

He’d dodged a cart covered in more rust than metal and held together with twine and prayers. Dodged a motorbike which belched purple smoke and glowed from within as if it were living. Dodged a pack animal with four eyes and six horns and feet as large as his head. He’d slowed as he neared the Dragon statue in the center of the city.

Twenty feet high and made of polished gold-veined marble and inlaid with rubies, it was as beautiful as it was a reminder of how little the leaders of Deme cared for its citizens. Pieces of that statue would feed the people in the lower slums for months. But worship of the Dragon and Dragon Son was paramount. Deme was a shining example of sacrificial devoutness with its statues and starvation.

“It’s a little much,” said a voice to his right.

A boy with skin a little redder and a little browner than Neal’s own had stood there, frowning at the statue. He’d looked maybe a year or two older than Neal, but Neal was bad with ages. It didn’t help that the slums aged you faster than anything, or the rich fought aging with every cream and invention they could get their jeweled hands on. His hair was an inferno of wild red curls stretching toward the sky and, when he’d glanced at Neal, his eyes sparkled the same gold as the veins of the statue. The boy had smiled when Neal stared. “I’m Killian.”

“Neal.”

“I think we should tear down the statue,” Killian had said with as much nonchalance as one would use discussing the weather or the catch of the day.

Neal had looked around, part of him worrying he’d walked into a trap set for Separatists. “Why would you do that?”

Killian’s smile had grown and Neal’s stomach lurched. “You were just thinking that a broken statue could feed everyone. So let’s break the statue.”

“You can read minds?” Neal had blurted before he realized his error. Ice flooded his veins and he’d stumbled back a step. Killian’s hand had closed around Neal’s arm, and he’d pulled him closer.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Neal,” Killian had said softly, his voice rolling across Neal’s bones and settling in his hips with an enticing warmth Neal wanted to fall into.

Neal had pulled his arm free and took a step back so he could breathe and think. “I think we should leave the statue alone. It might make the—”

“Dragon Son angry?” Killian had asked with a twist to his lips that made Neal feel as though he’d missed a joke. “If he’s even real.”

“Of course he’s real. The dragons keep us safe on land just as the merfolk keep us safe on water,” Neal had mumbled even while his insides beat out a steady rhythm of you. don’t. believe. that.

Killian had frowned. “Is that what you think?”

“The dragons built the cities and the sirens helped populate the land. We keep the land cared for and, in turn, they protect us.” Never mind that, despite the teachings that’d rolled off Neal’s tongue like a good little student, he knew humans had gotten the world drunk and ravaged her without consequence.

Killian hadn’t responded.

Neal had licked his lips. “I have a delivery.”

Killian had watched him silently for three heartbeats. “Have I upset you?”

“I don’t know you,” Neal had said.

“Do you want to?” Killian had asked. His eyes had widened for a heartbeat and he’d shifted his weight. He’d shoved his hands in his pockets and curled his shoulders inward and suddenly looked very small.

Neal had nodded, somewhat unsure as to why and yet . . .

“I’ll help you with your deliveries,” Killian had offered. “Then we could come back here.”

“Let’s go to the ocean,” Neal had suggested instead, his heart beating out the word home over and over against his breastbone. “It’s quieter.”

Twelve hours later on the rocky shores of the blue-black ocean, Killian kissed Neal on the cheek and told him he was beautiful. Neal hadn’t known how to react to the declaration beyond blushing as red as Killian’s hair. His insides were a mass of writhing snakes as he’d stared at Killian’s face. He’d worn his emotions plain on his face and in the long lines of his body, and Neal had wondered if this was how love happened. His mother had always told him it only took a look between her and his father (Dragon Son rest him). There’d been at least twenty-seven looks between himself and Killian.

Maybe that was love—a glance and a whisper of maybe.

“I have to go,” Killian had said suddenly, his eyes on the sun as it melted into the horizon.

The ocean had waved at them, frothy and beckoning. Neal’s skin had itched and tightened with yearning and oh, how he wanted to slip into those waves, but he stayed still. “When will you be back?”

“Not for a while. I don’t . . . I don’t come here very often. Maybe next year.”

The sun slid away and the sky became a bruise.

Neal had twisted his shirt in his fingers. “Can we do one more thing before you go?”

“Tear it down?”

“Yes.”

Killian had smiled and held out his hand, palm up. Neal had tangled his fingers with Killian’s and they headed back to the city. Ninety minutes after that, they’d stood in the ruin that was once the Dragon statue, breathing hard and blood singing with elation. Neal had curled his fingers in Killian’s shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. It was a little messy, a little inexpert, a little enthusiastic, but Killian had returned it, and that’s all that mattered.

Neal had hated anyone seeing him naked because of the secrets across his skin. Killian had understood and was gone the next morning.

Exactly twelve months later, Killian had reappeared next to the new, larger Dragon statue.

Twelve hours later, he and Neal had pulled it down again, breaking it into pieces small enough for children to carry away in the night.

“Do you have to go?” Neal had asked later that night, his lips pressed to Killian’s.

Killian had nodded, his eyes filled with apologies and explanations Neal couldn’t read. “I’ll come back for you.”

“When?” Neal had murmured, not wanting to damage this moment with the volume of his voice.

“When the world dies.”

The city never put up another statue.

• • • •

“I saw you in my dreams.” Neal dragged his fingers up Killian’s arms to his shoulders and the pulse point on his throat as the world burned. “For three nights. I wasn’t sure it was you until the third night.”

Killian tilted his head to the side, peering at him with bright eyes and asking a second time, “Can I keep you?”

“Ask me again,” Neal said as his hands slid up Killian’s chest, his fingers curling in the soft fabric of Killian’s shirt and pulling him in for another kiss. He tasted of fire and light and dreams and rhymes. Killian felt like a poem under his fingers and a lyric under his lips. “Ask me a third time, and then tell me how we stop this.”

“This,” Killian repeated.

“The death of the world.”

“Killian,” a low voice rumbled somewhere to their left.

The dragon was green with golden tinges to its scales. The green stood out as harsh as a lightning bolt, and as glittering as the stars that gave birth to Neal’s ancestors. It was as tall as an airship and as wide as the scorched alleyway, but it lowered its great head to the ground to stare at them with one golden eye.

Killian stepped in front of Neal, one hand still on Neal’s hip, and lowered his chin. “Don’t touch this one.”

The dragon huffed, smoke curling out of its nostrils in wisps. “You know the law. You cannot choose a human.”

Neal closed his eyes and pressed his face to the space between Killian’s shoulder blades, soaking in the heat rising off Killian’s skin. Heat pushed at him from all sides—Killian, the dragons, the scorched air.

I’m not human, Neal thought, pushing every memory he had of water and darkness and stars to the front of his mind.

“He isn’t human,” Killian said, his voice a rumble along his spine.

The dragon stood silent for six heartbeats, Neal held jagged secrets on the tip of his tongue, and Killian tightened his grip to keep him silent. The magic of the rhymes and the rhythm of the city filtered away to the roars of dragons and the screams of humans.

“Dragon Son,” the dragon began then stopped with a shake of its great head.

“Quell your fire,” Neal whispered.

“This has to stop, Niyah,” Killian said, his voice low and hard.

“This was foretold,” the dragon answered. “By your father, if the humans continued to run their machines through the flesh of the world.”

“And you’ll blindly follow an old dragon who hasn’t seen the sky in centuries?” Killian raised his chin to a dragon. “If the world dies, so do we.”

Niyah shook her great head like a dog. “You belong with us.”

Killian turned, putting his back to a monster. He cupped Neal’s face as if he was handling glass. “Can I keep you?”

Neal nodded, his cheeks bunching in Killian’s fingers. “You’re the Dragon Son.”

Killian turned at a sound somewhere between a scrape and a growl, the burning heavens’ light catching the reddish scales along his neck. Neal touched them with first a fingertip, then with his lips.

“Yes,” Neal whispered against the heat of Killian’s dragon scales.

There was a roar from Niyah and a shout from Killian and oh so much pain up and down Neal’s spine as the ground

cracked

and

heaved

and

rolled

under his feet and, for nine heartbeats, Neal knew what it was like to fly.

• • • •

When Neal was six, he discovered his mama was a mermaid.

Lana had always loved the ocean. She would stand on the beach with the sand between her toes and stare at the ocean with her storm-tossed eyes. Neal would build sandcastles, happily pushing sand into piles that had crumbled and never obeyed.

Never obeyed until Lana had knelt next to him and covered his little brown hands with her larger, darker ones. He’d settle back against the soft roundness of her belly that had carried him and the width of her thighs that always meant safety and watch as she helped him shape the cylinders. She’d tell him stories.

Stories of space sirens who swam through the stars. Who carried constellations in their hair and stardust in their bones and suns in their eyes. Who had meteors for teeth and comets for tails and swam from galaxy to galaxy protecting the universe. How the oldest and largest of their kind nestled in dying stars and became supernovas, creating new life and new bones and new constellations. How they wrapped around planets to protect them, the constellations in their tails showing sailors the way home night after night.

“Eons ago, a group of space sirens dove through the clouds and into the water, the force of their impact and their curiosity killing many creatures. Remorseful and guilty, they remained and rebuilt life on the little planet. Some remained in the oceans and became the merfolk who birthed monsters of the deep. Some traversed to the land and became humans who birthed monsters of land. The oceans repopulated and the merfolk built castles of coral and sunken ships. The lands glittered with the fingers of buildings adorned with jewels. Humanity spread and forgot where it came from.”

Even though he’d been too young to understand, it made him sad.

“We come from stardust, neecha,” she’d said, using the special name for him only she ever used. He didn’t know if it was a secret language or a word that simply sounded like Neal, but he didn’t care. “We come from those space sirens who swam through the cosmos and found a home here,” she’d continued in her soft voice. “You are made of stars. Never forget that.”

He’d twisted around in her lap and burrowed his face between ample breasts that had fed him for years and had blown raspberries on her throat until she’d laughed and twisted her head to the side.

And that was when he’d seen the scales. Shimmering silvery discs coating the side of her neck to behind her ear. The silver faded to the same green-blue of her eyes. Neal had touched them with first a fingertip, then with his lips. They were smooth and smelled like salt.

“Your papa found me in the water,” his mother had hummed to him as they shaped another castle. “He loved my eyes, and I loved his smile. We came back to land together and gave them both to you.”

Neal hadn’t understood what that meant and all he’d thought to ask was, “Do I have a tail?”

His mother had laughed, the sound clear and high like a bell across the water signaling the ships. “I don’t know, neecha, but you have eyes of the ocean and the heart of a dragon. You’re a son of water and a son of land and have stars in your bones, and one day, my little one, you will have to reconcile it all.”

Neal hadn’t understood what this meant either so he’d nodded as solemnly as he could manage. “Is papa a dragon?”

“Once upon a time his great-grandfather was a mighty gold dragon. He fell for a human woman,” she’d said in a quiet voice. “He ended their bloodline in order to be with her.”

He also hadn’t understood what this meant, other than it made his mama sad. “I wanna be a dragon when I grow up,” he’d whispered, his heart pounding up his throat and into his mouth where it threatened to fall out in his mother’s lap.

Lana had smiled at him and smoothed back his unruly hair. “Then be one, my little neecha.”

The next day the War of the Sea began with the destruction of an underwater battleship when it rammed the merking’s coral castle. Neal’s father was drafted to fight for the humans against the merfolk. Humans and merfolk forgot their ancestors. Forgot their shared history in the stars. Turned on each other in violence and vengeance. The horizon had glowed with the fires of ships and the luminescence of sea blood as if hell itself had split the earth open with the knife of war.

The war lasted four years. His father never returned home, and his mother always kept her scales covered with a red scarf.

She’d never spoken of the stars or the water again.

• • • •

Neal dragged his eyes open, the heat searing them the moment it could force its way past the tangle of his eyelashes. His first thought was of his messenger deliveries and how he was surely late. His second thought was of his mother and how the sky reminded him of her red scarf. His third thought was of the large red dragon currently staring at him with deep golden eyes, the pupils wide and concerned. His fourth thought was of horrible, unrelenting pain from his hips to his heart.

He groaned.

“Don’t move,” rumbled a voice.

In the breadth of a blink, the dragon was no longer a dragon but a boy with fiery hair and golden eyes and crimson scales patterning up his neck and to his cheekbones. As Neal stared, the scales receded off Killian’s face and faded to his neck where they blended back with his hair.

“I wish they stayed,” Neal said hoarsely. “The scales.”

Killian’s lips curled in a forced grin that didn’t reach his eyes, and he leaned over Neal. “You fell. One of the others . . . one of my kin . . . and I wasn’t fast enough to protect you. You’re hurt.”

Neal hummed, a pleasant numbness stealing through his body, mixing with the pain and making him a little lightheaded. “That would explain the cobbles for a bed.” He smelled brine on the air and twisted his head around, surprised to see the sea lapping at the rocks. “Your definition of fell is interesting.”

Killian rumbled low in his throat as Neal rolled to his side and pushed himself up on one elbow. His back hurt. His hips hurt. His legs stretched out before him, long and dark and heavy and oh so very unfeeling. Blood stuck his shirt to his stomach. He pressed a bruised hand to the darkest of the red across his side and swallowed the pain.

He couldn’t feel anything below his hipbones.

Airships boomed in the distance. Bodies of machine and beast fell into the ocean, sending up clouds of water and steam which rolled inland in a claustrophobic, sucking fog. Sirens blared and humans shouted as they tried to organize against the assault. But Deme wasn’t soldiers. Deme was the poor and the devout. The rich and the merchants. Instead of swords, they had pamphlets.

“What is this?” Neal stared at the city. At the skyline traced with the flames of dragons.

“Awakening,” Killian said, his eyes reflecting the fire. “I had a plan.” He furrowed long fingers through wild curls and stared at the fire. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Dragon Son,” Neal murmured over the roars. “You’ve been the Dragon Son the whole time. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Killian turned his golden eyes away from the fire and to Neal, his scales rolling up to his cheekbones again. “I need to get you out of here. To help.”

“Don’t do that,” Neal pleaded. Pain crawled up his back and into his neck. He gasped at the intensity. “You said you could stop this. Is it because you’re the Dragon Son?”

Killian pressed his lips together, his scales fading again. “I’m my father’s son, but my mother was human. Way back in her lineage, her ancestors were sirens.”

Neal stared, tingles rolling down his arms that had nothing to do with his broken body or the destruction around him. “You knew . . . about me. I thought you’d read my mind.”

Killian nodded, his eyes soft. “I knew the moment I met you.”

A V-formation of black dragons flew overhead, their bodies long and sleek and carrying death to the metal and wooden structures that adorned the ground like gravestones. Killian pushed at Neal’s chin and Neal turned his head, knowing the light would catch the faint scales behind his ears.

He’d always kept them hidden, but the ocean ran in his blood, turning it bluer than any amount of money or pedigree ever could.

Killian rubbed a thumb over Neal’s scales. “I thought if we went to my father and your grandfather . . .”

“The merking.”

Killian stayed silent. He pressed his lips to Neal’s scales.

“The sirens hate the humans after the War of the Sea.” Neal grimaced as pain slid across his shoulders. He shivered and the world swam out of focus and back in again as a creeping cold stole through his bones, mixing with the pain and turning his stomach. He turned his face for a kiss, his own eyes prickling and burning at the corners. “Take me to the ocean.”

“You said I could keep you,” Killian said, the growl of his voice betrayed by the desperation in his eyes and the clenching of his fingertips on the side of Neal’s neck.

Neal leaned into Killian’s grip, exhaling heavily as pain pulsed through his body with the force of his heartbeat. “I’m not dead yet. We can still stop this if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Don’t say that.”

They stared at each other for twenty-one heartbeats.

Neal closed his eyes, and Killian became a dragon.

• • • •

When Neal was thirteen, he grew a tail.

As far back as he could remember, he’d always known how to swim. Fleeting memories that were more flickering images of light and color than anything tangible showed him water and chubby baby fists.

Three years after the War of the Sea, Neal had crept past his mother’s darkened bedroom and out of the house that was little more than four walls of wooden sadness and plaster melancholy. He’d made his way to the ocean, his shadow sliding across buildings and streets like a wraith. He’d refused to believe his father perished. There’d never been a body and his ship had never been found. It was as if the mighty steamship and her hundreds of soldiers disappeared into the fog on the ocean and became ghosts. He’d felt in his thirteen-year-old bones his father was still out there. If Neal could find him . . .

If Neal could find him . . .

If Neal could find him, maybe his mom would smile again.

Cold wind had whipped off the water and curled around his arms, pulling and tugging him toward the darkness. His dragon heart had pounded out the rhythm of his fear even as he’d shed his clothes and pushed against the incoming waves. The water had finally embraced him and pulled him far away from shore and safety, the ground falling away beneath his bare toes into the abyss of the ocean.

He had breathed in

one

two

three

four

five

six

then dove

He’d kicked his feet and sliced his arms through the water, the darkness growing lighter by degrees as his eyes had shifted. His lungs had burned less, and a warmth had stolen through his body until he was no longer kicking with feet but with a long, black, eel-like tail that stretched behind him for an age. It had glowed with streaks of blue as warning he held poison in his sharpened bite, something he’d accidentally discovered last time he swam.

Neal had never told his mother about his midnight swims.

He’d never told anyone. Telling would mean questions.

All he wanted to do was swim in the darkness.

He walked the line between two worlds, and those worlds had ripped each other’s hearts out of their bodies, tearing him apart in the process.

Neal had paused a mile out from the shore, his tail flicking back and forth in agitation. The water had pushed at his body, holding him together when all he wanted to do was fly apart.

The gloom cleared and a face had appeared. Human but not. Silver skin. A black tail that bloomed and billowed behind her body like a royal train. Teeth like knives and a smile that could cut glass. Too-wide eyes glimmered with their own soft, blue light. Too-long fingers had flicked off signs in a language Neal had worked hard to master.

“No word,” the mermaid had said. “No word of your land father.”

Neal had looked away, disappointment punching his heart and squeezing his chest. He was grateful for the ocean pressed to his face. No one would ever see the tears.

“You have to find him,” Neal had begged, his signs stumbling and inexpert.

“I cannot.”

“You can.”

The mermaid had paused. “Your land father is lost. You must accept this.”

“No.” Neal had sliced the sign through the pressure and the water and the heartache.

“You are young yet,” the mermaid had signed, something closely resembling human sympathy contorting her features. “You will heal. The king—”

“I need my father. She needs him.” Neal had flicked his tail and propelled himself backward. “If you won’t help me, I’ll look for him myself.”

Long fingers had closed around his arm and pulled him back. The mermaid’s tail had floated up almost lazily but surrounded Neal like a cloak. It had twisted and spread and wrapped until the two of them floated in a cocoon lit by the mermaid’s glowing eyes.

Neal had bowed his head, shaking it in frustration. His tears had mixed with the sea, and a little more of him was lost to its darkness.

“It’s been three years. You belong with us,” the mermaid had signed slowly. “You belong here with your kind. Forget this foolish quest and come home.”

“I’m not like you.” Neal had gestured to his brown skin and human hair and sea-colored eyes.

The mermaid had dragged their fingertips down Neal’s face, scratching lightly over the shimmering scales that dusted his cheekbones. “You are more like us than you could ever imagine. Your mother never should have left us.”

“I can’t.”

“Come home.”

Come home.

• • • •

Home was a word Neal had no definition for. Home was his mother. Home was his father. Home was the ocean. Home was his burning city. Home was the worn cobbles. Home was Killian, who was more dragon than boy and carried him across the dark water in clawed feet.

The dragon’s wings beat the air in a rhythm as old as time itself, syncing with Neal’s heartbeat as he faded in and out of consciousness. The pain crawled through his body, settling deep into his bones.

They flew away from the burning city, away from the roars of dragons, away from the screams of the damned, their faded neon graffiti failing to save them. The further out to sea they flew, the more the sky cleared, until the stars glittered above them like scales on a space siren’s tail. The constellations shifted as the great siren who guarded their tiny planet with her illustrious tail unwrapped herself from the ball of destruction as if escaping the chaos below.

Night flooded the world, and constellations vanished into the darkness of the cosmos.

Neal stared at the darkness, at the billowing void of space that yawned at their world with meteors for teeth and comets for tails and binary suns for eyes.

His scales itched.

The dragon swooped lower to the ocean, the stillness calling to Neal’s scales even as his heart beat for the beast who saved him.

They landed on a small island that was nothing more than an undersea mountain peeking at the world. When the dragon landed, Neal closed his eyes.

“Open your eyes,” Killian whispered, his voice underpinned with the growl of a dragon. “Please.”

Neal smiled, raising a hand to find Killian’s face. Killian’s cheek pressed to his palm, his skin heated and smooth even as the scales receded under Neal’s touch.

Killian’s fingers pushed through Neal’s hair. “Eons ago,” he began in a halting voice, “this planet was nothing more than a big rock floating through space. She had no life, no sentience, no heartbeat.”

“What happened?” Neal asked as he opened his eyes.

Killian gathered Neal in his arms and carried him closer to the water. Silently, he helped Neal pull off his clothes and, for once, Neal wasn’t ashamed to be naked in front of one who could see the scales winding across his flesh like the footprints of another life.

The ocean lapped at Neal’s dead and broken human legs, probing and pushing and exploring and soothing. Neal leaned against Killian’s chest, his lower half in the darkness of the ocean. The salt stung his wounds but, for the moment, he was grateful he could still feel them. Could still feel Killian’s overheated skin.

“The dragons once nested in the cosmos, their breath turning stardust into new suns. A flock of dragons found this rock and burrowed to its core, stoking the fire in the planet’s belly. The warmth made its way to the surface and gave birth to life.”

Killian’s arms tightened as goosebumps rolled up Neal’s bare flesh. “After thousands of cycles passed, the first of the dragons broke the surface and found it’d been populated with the descendants of space sirens. At first, they were enraged because the dragons had come first.”

“The sirens came from the stars, too,” Neal murmured, his long dark tail waving in the water with the rhythm of its movement, unable to move on its own yet. “They played and fell and created an apocalypse. They stayed in order to fix the destruction they’d wrought.”

Killian pressed his lips to Neal’s hair. “When the dragon’s wrath faded, they united their races and populated the earth with their blood. The sirens retreated to the sea and the dragons held the land, but both races loved humanity too much to abandon them. They became fascinated by the stardust in their bones and the constellations in their eyes and the fierceness in their mortal hearts.”

“And we were born,” Neal said.

“The half-breeds.” Killian nuzzled Neal’s ear and pressed his lips against the scales there. “Those of us with dragon hearts and siren eyes and fire in our veins and blue in our blood.”

“What happened next?” Neal asked. His mother never told him this part of the story. Tingles ran down his hips as injury knitted along his spine. His tail flicked once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Killian pressed his nose to Neal’s cheek and sighed. “The Dragon King—my father—hated his half-breed son and pulled him deep within the earth to punish him and his human mother. She wasn’t supposed to have a child, you see.”

“But I saw you,” Neal said.

“The boy escaped once a year with the help of a very old dragon named Niyah and clawed his way to the surface so he could see the sky and smell the salt in the air and see the cities rise.” He cleared his throat. “I met you after one of those escapes, and I knew then I had to keep coming back.”

“Why?” Neal said in a soft voice barely heard over the splash of the waves on the rocks.

“Because I fell in love with you.” Killian said, his voice hitched as if an ending neither of them wanted approached with the force of a comet.

“Dragon Son,” Neal whispered as he turned his face to Killian’s.

“Siren Son,” Killian replied, his voice merely a warm breath before their lips met.

The dragons roared, and the world cried out for relief as the sirens reached down out of the heavens to stir up the storms and soothe the scorched skin of the planet’s surface. The rain pattered the rocks, streaking them like tears. It played across the ocean and their bodies. In the growing darkness, three merfolk broke the surface, their large eyes trained on Neal.

“I can’t lose you to the darkness,” Killian said against Neal’s lips.

“I’m dying,” Neal said, giving voice to what they both knew. “My human legs are useless now. The ocean is my only hope for the rest of me. My family . . .” His voice faltered over words he’d never uttered aloud before this moment and the acceptance was oddly freeing. “My family can save me.”

“We will,” a mermaid said in a rasping voice, hoarse from disuse.

“But he belongs with us,” said a second.

Neal swallowed the rock in his throat. “If I come with you, you have to help stop the dragons. You have to help the humans.”

Two of the merfolk hissed, baring needle teeth. The third stared at Neal for twelve heartbeats. Neal stared back.

“You will die if you stay on land. Your human body is broken,” the mermaid rasped.

“That’s the deal,” Neal said. “Brother.”

The merman tilted his head, something resembling a smile ghosting over its pallid features.

“Neal,” Killian whispered.

Neal shuddered, swallowing the scream. Swallowing the pain. Swallowing the anguish of what this deal would mean. No more legs. No more land. Forever in the darkness and silence of the ocean. He leaned fully into Killian’s arms, his strength leeching into the rocks.

“Agreed,” the merman said.

“I have to go,” Neal managed. He tasted metal on his tongue, and all he wanted to do was sleep.

“Then you’ll come back,” Killian said. He put two fingers over Neal’s lips before he could shatter Killian’s hope with a single word. “Let me dream.”

Neal slid into the water, and Killian’s hands slid off Neal’s body. The merfolk embraced the boy with the ocean eyes and made him whole as he returned to the darkness and silence that was his home. The dragon howled at the sky, his golden eyes flashing, and beat his wings against the heat as he took flight to stop his brethren from killing the world.

• • • •

While the history texts chronicled official accounts of the War of the Sea, the Awakening, and the Reconstruction, legends and myths live longer than schoolbooks made of paper and old men’s thoughts.

As humans reclaimed the earth and waited for the sky to cool, they told the story of the Dragon Son, who stopped the dragons because his heart was broken and he could bear no more death. They told the story of the Siren Son, who returned home and rallied his people to put away the vestiges of their hatred in order to save the world. The story became myth and myth became legend. In some stories, it was a sparrow and a perch. In others, it was a snake and a shark. But most remembered and passed those memories through generations.

The history texts would never write of the boy named Neal or the boy named Killian, but the people forever spoke of the Siren Son with the dragon heart who fell in love with the Dragon Son and, together, stopped the death of the world.

And sometimes, on a clear night under the glittering constellations of the Siren’s tail, you might see a fleeting shadow cross the moon as the Dragon Son flies over the darkness of the ocean in search of the Siren Son.

When they find each other—as mothers tell their children at bedtime—the world is calm but for a moment.

For a moment

the

world

can

breathe.

©2016 by Tristina Wright.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tristina Wright is a blue-haired bisexual with anxiety and opinions. She’s also possibly a mermaid, but no one can get confirmation. She writes YA SFF novels and short stories with queer teens who become heroes and monsters. She enjoys stories with monsters and kissing and monsters kissing. She married a nerd who can build her new computers and make the sun shine with his smile. Most days, she can be found drinking coffee from her favorite chipped mug and making up stories for her two wombfruit, who keep her life hectic and unpredictable.

27 Hours will be her debut novel in Fall 2017. Meanwhile, you can find her guest posts and short stories scattered around the internet via tristinawright.com.

Still trying to figure out the mermaid thing.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Bone Swans of Amandale

C.S.E. Cooney | 28,490 words

Dora Rose reached her dying sister a few minutes before the Swan Hunters did. I watched it all from my snug perch in the old juniper, and I won’t say I didn’t enjoy the scene, what with the blood and the pathos and everything. If only I had a handful of nuts to nibble on, sugared and roasted, the kind they sell in paper packets on market day when the weather turns. They sure know how to do nuts in Amandale.

“Elinore!” Dora Rose’s voice was low and urgent, with none of the fluting snootiness I remembered. “Look at me. Elinore. How did they find you? We all agreed to hide—”

Ah, the good stuff. Drama. I lived for it. I scuttled down a branch to pay closer attention.

Dora Rose had draped the limp girl over her lap, stroking back her black, black hair. White feathers everywhere, trailing from Elinore’s shoulders, bloodied at the breast, muddied near the hem. Elinore must’ve been midway between a fleshing and a downing when that Swan Hunter’s arrow got her.

“Dora Rose.” Elinore’s wet red hand left a death smear on her sister’s face. “They smoked out the cygnets. Drove them to the lake. Nets—horrible nets. They caught Pope, Maleen, Conrad—even Dash. We tried to free them, but more hunters came, and I . . .”

Turned herself into a swan, I thought, and flew the hellfowl off. Smart Elinore.

She’d not see it that way, of course. Swan people fancied themselves a proud folk, elegant as lords in their haughty halls, mean as snakes in a tight corner. Me, I preferred survivors to heroes. Or heroines, however comely.

“I barely escaped,” Elinore finished.

From the looks of that gusher in her ribs, I’d guess “escaped” was a gross overstatement. But that’s swans for you. Can’t speak but they hyperbolize. Every girl’s a princess. Every boy’s a prince. Swan Folk take their own metaphors so seriously they hold themselves lofty from the vulgar throng. Dora Rose explained it once, when we were younger and she still deigned to chat with the likes of me: “It’s not that we think less of anyone, Maurice. It’s just that we think better of ourselves.”

“Dora Rose, you mustn’t linger. They’ll be tracking me. . .”

Elinore’s hand slipped from Dora Rose’s cheek. Her back arched. Her bare toes curled under, and her hands clawed the mossy ground. From her lips burst the most beautiful song—a cascade of notes like moonlight on a waterfall, like a wave breaking on boulders, like the first snow melt of spring. All swan girls are princesses, true, but if styling themselves as royalty ever got boring, they could always go in for the opera.

Elinore was a soprano. Her final, stretched notes pierced even me. Dora Rose used to tell me that I had such tin ears as could be melted down for a saucepan, which at least might then be flipped over and used for a drum, thus contributing in a trivial way to the musical arts.

So maybe I was a little tone-deaf. Didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy a swan song when I heard one.

As she crouched anxiously over Elinore’s final aria, Dora Rose seemed far remote from the incessantly clever, sporadically sweet, gloriously vain girl who used to be my friend. The silvery sheen of her skin was frosty with pallor. As the song faded, its endmost high note stuttering to a sigh that slackened the singer’s white lips, Dora Rose whispered, “Elinore?”

No answer.

My nose twitched as the smell below went from dying swan girl to freshly dead carcass. Olly-olly-in-for-free. As we like to say.

Among my Folk, carrion’s a feast that’s first come, first served, and I was well placed to take the largest bite. I mean, I could wait until Dora Rose lit on outta there. Not polite to go nibbling on someone’s sister while she watched, after all. Just not done. Not when that someone had been sort of a friend. (All right—unrequited crush. But that was kid stuff. I’m over it. Grown up. Moved on.)

I heard the sound before she did. Ulia Gol’s ivory horn. Not good.

“Psst!” I called from my tree branch. “Psst, Dora Rose. Up here!”

Her head snapped up, twilight eyes searching the tangle of the juniper branches. This tree was the oldest and tallest in the Maze Wood, unusually colossal for its kind, even with its trunk bent double and its branches bowing like a willow’s. Nevertheless, Dora Rose’s sharp gaze caught my shadowy shape and raked at it like fingernails. I grinned at her, preening my whiskers. Always nice to be noticed by a Swan Princess. Puts me on my mettle.

“Who is it?” Her voice was hoarse from grief and fear. I smelled both on her. Salt and copper.

“Forget me so quickly, Ladybird?” Before she could answer, I dove nose-first down the shaggy trunk, fleshing as I went. By the time I hit ground, I was a man. Man-shaped, anyway. Maybe a little undersized. Maybe scraggly, with a beard that grew in patches, a nose that fit my face better in my other shape, and eyes only a mother would trust—and only if she’d been drunk since breakfast.

“Maurice!”

“The Incomparable,” I agreed. “Your very own Maurice.”

Dora Rose stood suddenly, tall and icy in her blood-soaked silver gown. I freely admit to a dropped jaw, an abrupt excess of saliva. She’d only improved with time; her hair was as pale as her sister’s had been dark, her eyes as blue as Lake Serenus where she and her Folk dwelled during their winter migrations. The naked grief I’d sensed in her a few moments ago had already cooled, like her sister’s corpse. Swan Folk have long memories but a short emotional attention span.

Unlike Rat Folk, whose emotions could still get the better of them after fifteen years . . .

“What are you doing in the Maze Wood?” The snootiness I’d missed was back in her voice. Fabulous.

“Is that what this is?” I peered around, scratching behind my ear. She always hated when I scratched. “I thought it was the theater. The Tragedy of the Bonny Swans. The Ballad of the Two Sisters . . .”

Her eyes narrowed. “Maurice, of all the times to crack your tasteless jokes!”

Aaaarooooo! The ivory horn again. This time Dora Rose heard it, too. Her blue eyes flashed black with fury and terror. She hesitated, frozen between flesh and feather, fight and flight. I figured I’d help her out. Just this once. For old time’s sake.

“Up the tree,” I suggested. “I’ll give you a boost.”

She cast a perturbed look at dead Elinore, grief flickering briefly across her face. Rolling my eyes, I snapped, “Up, Princess! Unless you want to end the same, here and now.”

“Won’t the hounds scent me there?”

Dora Rose, good girl, was already moving toward me as she asked the question. Thank the Captured God. Start arguing with a swan girl, and you’ll not only find yourself staying up all night, you’ll also suffer all the symptoms of a bad hangover in the morning—with none of the fun parts between.

“This old tree’s wily enough to mask your scent, my plume. If you ask nicely. We’re good friends, the juniper and I.”

I’d seen enough Swan Folk slaughtered beneath this tree to keep me tethered to it by curiosity alone. All right, so maybe I stayed with the mildly interested and not at all pathological hope of meeting Dora Rose again, in some situation not unlike this one, perhaps to rescue her from the ignominy of such a death. But I didn’t tell her that. Not while her twin sister lay dead on the ground, her blood seeping into the juniper’s roots. By the time Elinore had gotten to the tree, it’d’ve been too late for me to attempt anything, anyway. Even had I been so inclined.

And then, Dora Rose’s hand on my shoulder. Her bare heel in my palm. And it was like little silver bells ringing under my skin where she touched me.

Easy, Maurice. Easy, you sleek and savvy rat, you. Bide.

Up she went, and I after her, furring and furling myself into my more compact but no less natty shape. We were both safe and shadow-whelmed in the bent old branches by the time Mayor Ulia Gol and her Swan Hunters arrived on the scene.

If someone held a piece of cheese to my head and told me to describe Ulia Gol in one word or starve, I’d choose, magnificent. I like cheese too much to dither.

At a guess, I’d say Ulia Gol’s ancestry wasn’t human. Ogre on her mama’s side. Giant on her daddy’s. She was taller than Dora Rose, who herself would tower over most mortal men, though Dora Rose was long-lined and lean of limb whereas Ulia Gol was a brawny woman. Her skin was gold as a glazed chicken, her head full of candy-pink curls as was the current fashion. Her breasts were like two mozzarella balls ripe for the gnawing, with hips like two smoked hams. A one-woman banquet, that Ulia Gol, and she knew it, too. The way to a mortal’s heart is through its appetite, and Ulia Gol prided herself on collecting mortal hearts. It was a kind of a game with her. Her specialty. Her sorcery.

She had a laugh that reached right out and tickled your belly. They say it was her laugh that won her the last election in Amandale. It wasn’t. More like a mob-wide love spell she cast on her constituents. I don’t know much about magic, but I know the smell of it. Amandale stinks of Ulia Gol. Its citizens accepted her rule with wretched adoration, wondering why they often woke of a night in a cold sweat from foul dreams of their Mayor feasting on the flesh of their children.

On the surface, she was terrifyingly jovial. She liked hearty dining and a good, hard day at the hunt. Was known for her fine whiskey, exotic lovers, intricate calligraphy, and dabbling in small—totally harmless, it was said—magics, mostly in the realm of the Performing Arts. Was a little too enthusiastic about taxes, everyone thought, but mostly used them to keep Amandale in good order. Streets, bridges, schools, secret police. That sort of thing.

Mortal politics was the idlest of my hobbies, but Ulia Gol had become a right danger to the local Folk, and that directly affected me. Swans weren’t the only magic creatures she’d hunted to extinction in the Maze Wood. Before this latest kick, Ulia Gol had ferreted out the Fox Folk, those that fleshed to mortal shape, with tails tucked up under their clothes. Decimated the population in this area. You might ask how I know—after all, Fox Folk don’t commune with Rat Folk any more than Swan Folk do. We just don’t really talk to each other.

But then, I always was extraordinary. And really nosy.

Me, I suspected Ulia Gol’s little hunting parties had a quite specific purpose. I think she knew the Folk could recognize her as inhuman. Mortals, of course, had no idea what she was. What mortals might do if they discovered their Mayor manipulated magic to make the ballot box come out in her favor? Who knew? Mortals in general are content to remain divinely stupid and bovinely docile for long periods of time, but when their ire’s roused, there is no creature cleverer in matters of torture and revenge.

Ulia Gol adjusted her collar of rusty fox fur. It clashed terribly with her pink-and-purple riding habit, but she pulled it off with panache. Her slanted beaver hat dripped half a dozen black-tipped tails, which bounced as she strode into the juniper tree’s clearing. Two huge-jowled hounds flanked her. She caught her long train up over her arm, her free hand clasping her crossbow with loose proficiency.

“Ha!” shouted Ulia Gol over her shoulder to someone out of my sightlines. “I thought I got her.” She squatted over dead Elinore, studying her. “What do you think of this one, Hans? Too delicate for the glockenspiel, I reckon. Too tiny for the tuba. The cygnets completed our wind and percussion sections. Those two cobs and yesterday’s pen did for the brass. We might as well finish up the strings here.”

A man emerged from a corridor in the Maze Wood. He led Ulia Gol’s tall roan mare and his own gray gelding, and looked with interest on the dead swan girl.

“A pretty one,” he observed. “She’ll make a fine harp, Madame Mayor, unless I miss my guess.”

“Outstanding! I love a good harp song. But I always found the going rates too dear; harpists are so full of themselves.” Her purple grin widened. “Get the kids in here.”

The rest of her Swan Hunters began trotting into the Heart Glade on their plump little ponies. Many corridors, as you’d expect in a Maze Wood of this size, dead-ended in thorn, stone, waterfall, hedge, cliff edge. But Ulia Gol’s child army must’ve had the key to unlocking the maze’s secrets, for they came unhesitatingly into the glade and stood in the shadow of the juniper tree where we hid.

Aw, the sweetums. Pink-cheeked they were, the little killers, green-caped, and all of them wearing the famous multicolored, beaked masks of Amandale. Mortals are always fixed in their flesh, like my rat cousins who remain rats no matter what. Can’t do furrings, downings, or scalings like the Folk can. So they make do with elaborate costumes, body paint, millinery, and mass exterminations of our kind. Kind of adorable, really.

Ulia Gol clapped her hands. Her pink curls bounced and jounced. The foxtails on her beaver hat swung blithely.

“Dismount!” Her Hunters did so. “Whose turn is it, my little wretches?” she bawled at them. “Has to be someone fresh! Someone who’s bathed in mare’s milk by moonlight since yesterday’s hunt. Now—who’s clean? Who’s my pure and pretty chanticleer today? Come, don’t make me pick one of you!”

Oh, the awkward silence of children called upon to volunteer. A few heads bowed. Other masks lifted and looked elsewhere as if that act rendered them invisible. Presently one of the number was pushed to the forefront, so vehemently it fell and scraped its dimpled knees. I couldn’t help noticing that this child had been standing at the very back of the crowd, hugging itself and hoping to escape observation.

Fat chance, kiddling. I licked my lips. I knew what came next. I’d been watching this death dance from the juniper tree for weeks now.

Ulia Gol grinned horribly at the fallen child. “Tag!” she boomed. “You’re it.” Her heavy hand fell across the child’s shoulders, scooting it closer to the dead swan girl. “Dig. Dig her a grave fit for a princess.”

The child trembled in its bright green hunter’s cape. Its jaunty red mask was tied askew, like a deformed cardinal’s head stitched atop a rag doll. The quick desperation of its breath was audible even from the heights where we perched, me sweating and twitching, Dora Rose tense and pale, glistening faintly in the dimness of the canopy.

Dora Rose lay on her belly, arms and legs wrapped around the branch, leaning as far forward as she dared. She watched the scene with avid eyes, and I watched her. She wouldn’t have known why her people had been hunted all up and down the lake this autumn. Even when the swans began disappearing a few weeks ago, the survivors hadn’t moved on. Swan Folk were big on tradition; Lake Serenus was where they wintered, and that was that. To establish a new migratory pattern would’ve been tantamount to blasphemy. That’s swans for you.

I might have gone to warn them, I guess. Except that the last time she’d seen me, Dora Rose made it pretty clear that she’d rather wear a gown of graveyard nettles and pluck out her own feathers for fletching than have to endure two minutes more in my company. Of course, we were just teenagers then.

I gave the old juniper tree a pat, muttering a soundless prayer for keepsafe and concealment. Just in case Dora Rose’d forgotten to do as much in that first furious climb. Then I saw her lips move, saw her silver fingers stroking the shaggy branch. Good. So she, too, kept up a running stream of supplication. I’d no doubt she knew all the proper formulae; Swan Folk are as religious as they are royal. Maybe because they figure they’re the closest things to gods as may still be cut and bleed.

“WHY AREN’T YOU DIGGING YET?” bellowed Ulia Gol, hooking my attention downward.

A masterful woman, and so well coiffed! How fun it was to watch her make those children jump. In my present shape, I can scare grown men out of their boots, they’re that afraid of plague-carriers in these parts. The Folk are immune to plague, but mortals can’t tell a fixed rat from one of us to save their lives.

Amandale itself was mostly spared a few years back when things got really bad and the plague bells ringing death tolls in distant towns at last fell silent. Ulia Gol spread the rumor abroad that it was her mayoral prowess that got her town through unscathed. Another debt Amandale owed her.

How she loomed.

“Please, Madame Mayor, please!” piped the piccolo voice from behind the cardinal mask. It fair vibrated with apprehension. “I—I cannot dig. I have no shovel!”

“Is that all? Hans! A shovel for our shy red bird!”

Hans of the gray gelding trudged forward with amiable alacrity. I liked his style. Reminded me of me. He was not tall, but he had a dapper air. One of your blonds was Hans, high-colored, with a crooked but entirely proportionate nose, a gold-goateed chin, and boots up to the thigh. He dressed all in red, except for his green cape, and he wore a knife on his belt. A fine big knife, with one edge curved and outrageously serrated.

I shuddered deliciously, deciding right there and then that I would follow him home tonight and steal his things while he slept.

The shovel presented, the little one was bid a third time to dig.

The grave needed only be a shallow one for Ulia Gol’s purposes. This I had apprehended in my weeks of study. The earth hardly needed a scratch in its surface. Then the Swan Princess (or Prince, or heap of stiffening cygnets, as was the case yesterday) was rolled in the turned dirt and partially covered. Then Ulia Gol, towering over her small trooper with the blistered hands, would rip the mask off its face and roar, “Weep! If you love your life weep, or I’ll give you something to weep about!”

Unmasked, this afternoon’s child proved to be a young boy. One of the innumerable Cobblersawl brood unless I missed my guess. Baker’s children. The proverbial dozen, give or take a miscarriage. Always carried a slight smell of yeast about them.

Froggit, I think this little one’s name was. The seven-year-old. After the twins but before the toddlers and the infant.

I was quite fond of the Cobblersawls. Kids are so messy, you know, strewing crumbs everywhere. Bakers’ kids have the best crumbs. Their poor mother was often too harried to sweep up after the lot of them until bedtime. Well after the gleanings had been got.

Right now, dreamy little Froggit looked sick. His hands begrimed with dirt and Elinore’s blood, his brown hair matted with sweat, he covered her corpse well and good. Now, on cue, he started sobbing. Truth be told, he hadn’t needed Ulia Gol’s shouting to do so. His tears spattered the dirt, turning spots of it to mud.

Ulia Gol raised her arms like a conductor. Her big, shapely hands swooped through the air like kestrels.

“Sing, my children! You know the ditty well enough by now, I trust! This one’s female; make sure you alter the lyrics accordingly. One-two-three and—”

One in obedience, twenty young Swan Hunters lifted up their voices in wobbly chorus. The hounds bayed mournfully along. I hummed, too, under my breath.

When they’d started the Swan Hunt a few weeks ago, the kids used to join hands and gambol around the juniper tree all maypole-like at Ulia Gol’s urging. But the Mayor since discovered that her transformation spell worked just as well if they all stood still. Pity. I missed the dancing. Used to give the whole scene a nice theatrical flair.

Poor little swan girl
Heart pierced through
Buried ’neath the moss and dew
Restless in your grave you’ll be
At the foot of the juniper tree
But your bones shall sing your song
Morn and noon and all night long!

The music cut off with an abrupt slash of Ulia Gol’s hands. She nodded once in curt approval. “Go on!” she told Froggit Cobblersawl. “Dig her back up again!”

But here Froggit’s courage failed him. Or perhaps found him. For he scrubbed his naked face of tears, smearing worse things there, and stared up with big brown eyes that hated only one thing worse than himself, and that was Ulia Gol.

“No,” he said.

“Hans,” said Ulia Gol, “we have another rebel on our hands.”

Hans stepped forward and drew from its sheath that swell knife I’d be stealing later. Ulia Gol beamed down at Froggit, foxtails falling to frame her face.

“Master Cobblersawl.” She clucked her tongue. “Last week, we put out little Miss Possum’s eyes when she refused to sing up the bones. Four weeks before that, we lamed the legs of young Miss Greenpea. A cousin of yours, I think? On our first hunt, she threw that shovel right at Hans and tried to run away. But we took that shovel and we made her pay, didn’t we, Master Cobblersawl? And with whom did we replace her to make my hunters twenty strong again? Why, yourself, Master Cobblersawl. Now what, pray, Master Cobblersawl, do you think we’ll do to you?”

Froggit did not answer, not then. Not ever. The next sound he made was a wail, which turned into a shriek, which turned into a swoon. “No” was the last word Froggit Cobblersawl ever spoke, for Hans put his tongue to the knife.

After this, they corked up the swooning boy with moss to soak the blood, and called upon young Ocelot to dig the bones. They’d have to replace the boy later, as they’d replaced Greenpea and Possum. Ulia Gol needed twenty for her sorceries. A solid twenty. No more, no less.

Good old Ocelot. The sort of girl who, as exigency demanded, bathed in mare’s milk every night there was a bit of purifying moonlight handy. Her father was Chief Gravedigger in Amandale. She, at the age of thirteen and a half, was his apprentice. Of all her fellow Swan Hunters, Ocelot had the cleanest and most callused hands. Ulia Gol’s favorite.

She never flinched. Her shovel scraped once, clearing some of the carelessly spattered dirt from the corpse. The juniper tree glowed silver.

Scraped twice. The green ground roiled white as boiling milk.

Scraped thrice.

It was not a dead girl Ocelot freed from the dirt, after all. Not even a dead swan.

I glanced at Dora Rose to see how she was taking it. Her blue eyes were wide, her gaze fixed. No expression showed upon it, though. No sorrow or astonishment or rage. Nothing in her face was worth neglecting the show below us for, except the face itself. I could drink my fill of that pool and still die of thirst.

But I’d gone down that road once already. What separated us rats from other Folk was our ability to learn.

I returned my attention to the scene. When Ocelot stepped back to dust off her hands on her green cape, the exhumed thing that had been Elinore flashed into view.

It was, as Hans had earlier predicted, a harp.

And a large harp it was, of shining white bone, strung with black strings fine as hair, which Ulia Gol bent to breathe upon lightly. Shimmering, shuddering, the harp repeated back a refrain of Elinore’s last song.

“It works,” Ulia Gol announced with tolling satisfaction. “Load it up on the cart, and we’ll take it back to Orchestra Hall. A few more birds in the bag and my automatized orchestra will be complete!”

• • • •

Back in our budding teens, I’d elected to miss a three-day banquet spree with my rat buddies in post-plague Doornwold, Queen’s City. (A dead city now, like the Queen herself.) Why? To attend instead at Dora Rose’s invitation a water ballet put on by the Swan Folk of Lake Serenus.

I know, right? The whole affair was dull as a tidy pantry, lemme tell you. When I tried to liven things up with Dora Rose a little later, just a bit of flirt and fondle on the silver docks of Lake Serenus, I got myself soundly slapped. Then the Swan Princess of my dreams told me that my attentions were not only unsolicited and unwelcome but grossly, criminally, heinously repellent—her very words—and sent me back to sulk in my nest in Amandale.

You should’ve seen me. Tail dragging. Whiskers drooping. Sniveling into my fur. Talk about heinously repellent. I couldn’t’ve been gladder my friends had all scampered over to the new necropolis, living it up among the corpses of Doornwold. By the time they returned, I had a handle on myself. Started up a dialogue with a nice, fat rat girl. We had some good times. Her name was Moira. That day on the docks was the last I saw Dora Rose up close for fifteen years.

Until today.

Soft as I was, by the time the last of the Swan Hunters trotted clear of the Heart Glade on their ponies, I’d decided to take Dora Rose back to my nest in Amandale. I had apartments in a warren of condemned tenements by the Drukkamag River docks. Squatters’ paradise. Any female should rightly have spasmed at the chance; my wainscoted walls were only nominally chewed, my furniture salvaged from the alleyways of Merchant Prince Row, Amandale’s elite. The current mode of decoration in my neighborhood was shabby chic. Distressed furniture? Mine was so distressed, it could’ve been a damsel in a past life.

But talking Dora Rose down from the juniper tree proved a trifle dicey. She wanted to return to Lake Serenus right away and search for survivors.

“Yeah, you and Huntsman Hans,” I snorted. “He goes out every night with his nets, hoping to bag another of your Folk. Think he’ll mistake you, with your silver gown and your silver skin, for a ruddy-kneed mortal milkmaid out for a skinny dip? Come on, Dora Rose! You got more brains than that, even if you are a bird.”

I was still in my rat skin when I told her this. She turned on me savagely, grabbing me by the tail, and shook me, hissing as only swans and cobras can hiss. I’d’ve bitten her, but I was laughing too hard.

“Do you have a better idea, Maurice? Maybe you would be happiest if I turned myself in to Ulia Gol right now! Is that what I should do?”

I fleshed myself to man-shape right under her hands. She dropped me quickly, cheeks burning. Dora Rose did not want to see what she’d’ve been holding me by once I changed form. I winked at her.

“I got a lot of ideas, Dora Rose, but they all start with a snack and a nap.”

Breathing dangerously, she shied back, deeper into the branches. Crossed her arms over her chest. Narrowed her lake-blue eyes. For a swan, you’d think her mama was a mule.

“Come on, Ladybird,” I coaxed, scooting nearer—but not too near—my own dear Dora Rose. “You’re traumatized. That’s not so strong a word, is it, for what you’ve been through today?”

Her chin jutted. Her gaze shifted. Her lips were firm, not trembling. Not a trembler, that girl. I settled on a nice, thick branch, my legs dangling in the air.

“Damn it, Dora Rose, your twin sister’s just been turned into a harp! Your family, your friends, your Folk—all killed and buried and dug back up again as bone instruments. And for what?” I answered myself, since she wouldn’t. “So that Mayor Ulia Gol, that skinflint, can cheat Amandale’s Guild of Musicians of their entertainment fees. She wants an orchestra that plays itself—so she’s sacrificing swans to the juniper tree.”

Her mouth winced. She was not easy to faze, my Dora Rose. But hey, she’d had a tough day, and I was riding her hard.

“You’d be surprised,” I continued, “how many townspeople support Mayor Gol and her army of Swan Hunters. Everyone likes music. So what’s an overextended budget to do?”

Dora Rose unbent so far as to roll her eyes. Taking this as a sign of weakening, I hopped down from the juniper tree.

“Come home with me, Ladybird,” I called up. “There’s a candy shop around the corner from my building. I’ll steal you enough caramels to make you sick. You can glut your grief away, and then you can sleep. And in the morning, when you’ve decided it’s undignified to treat your only ally—no matter his unsavory genus—so crabbily, we’ll talk again.”

A pause. A rustle. A soundless silver falling. Dora Rose landed lightly on her toe-tips. Above us, an uneasy breeze jangled the dark green needles of the juniper tree. There was a sharp smell of sap. The tree seemed to breathe. It did that, periodically. The god inside its bark did not always sleep.

Dora Rose’s face was once more inscrutable, all grief and rage veiled behind her pride. “Caramels?” she asked.

Dora Rose once told me, years ago, that she liked things to taste either very sweet or very salty. Caramels, according to her, were the perfect food.

“Dark chocolate sea-salt caramels,” I expounded with only minimal drooling. “Made by a witch named Fetch. These things are to maim for, Dora Rose.”

“You remembered.” She sounded surprised. If I’d still been thirteen (Captured God save me from ever being thirteen again), I might’ve burst into tears to be so doubted. Of course I remembered! Rats have exceptional memories. Besides—in my youth, I’d kept a strict diary. Mortal-style.

I was older now. I doffed my wharf boy’s cap and offered my elbow. In my best Swan Prince imitation, I told her, “Princess, your every word is branded on my heart.”

I didn’t do it very well; my voice is too nasal, and I can’t help adding overtones of innuendo. But I think Dora Rose was touched by the effort. Or at least, she let herself relax into the ritual of courtesy, something she understood in her bones. Her bones. Which Ulia Gol wanted to turn into a self-playing harpsichord to match Elinore’s harp.

Over. My. Dead. Body.

Oh, all right. My slightly dented body. Up to and no further than a chunk off the tail. After that, Dora Rose would be on her own.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

She took my elbow. She even leaned on it a smidge, which told me how exhausted and stricken she was beneath her feigned indifference. I refrained from slavering a kiss upon her silver knuckles. Just barely.

• • • •

The next morning, thanks to a midnight raid on Hans’s wardrobe, I was able to greet Dora Rose at my dapper best. New hose, new shining thigh-high boots, new scarlet jerkin, green cape and linen sark. New curved dagger with serrated edge, complete with flecks of Froggit Cobblersawl’s drying tongue meat on it.

I’d drawn the line at stealing Hans’s blond goatee, being at some loss as how best to attach it to my own chin. But I did not see why he should have one when I couldn’t. I had, therefore, left it at the bottom of his chamber pot should he care to seek it there.

Did the Swan Princess gaze at me in adoration? Did she stroke my fine sleeve or fondle my blade? Not a bit of it. She sat on the faded cushion of my best window seat, playing with a tassel from the heavy draperies and chewing on a piece of caramel. Her blue stare went right through me. Not blank, precisely. Meditative. Distant. Like I wasn’t important enough to merit even a fraction of her full attention.

“What I cannot decide,” she said slowly, “is what course I should take. Ought I to fly at Ulia Gol in the open streets of Amandale and dash her to the ground? Ought I to forsake this town entirely, and seek shelter with some other royal bevy? If,” she added with melancholy, “they would have me. This I doubt, for I would flee to them with empty hands and under a grave mantle of sorrow. Ought I to await at the lake for Hans’s net and Hans’s knife and join my Folk in death, letting my transformation take me at the foot of the juniper tree?”

That’s swans for you. Fraught with “oughts.” Stop after three choices, each bleaker and more miserably elegant than the last. Vengeance, exile, or suicide. Take your pick. I sucked my tongue against an acid reply, taking instead a cube of caramel and a deep breath. Twitched my nose. Smoothed out the wrinkles of distaste. Went to crouch on the floor by the window seat. (This was not, I’ll have you know, the same as kneeling at her feet. For one thing, I was balancing on my heels, not my knees.)

“Seems to me, Dora Rose,” I suggested around a sticky, salty mouthful, “that what you want in a case like this—”

“Like this?” she asked, and I knew she was seeing her sister’s hair repurposed for harp strings. “There has never been a case like mine, Maurice, so do not dare attempt to eclipse the magnitude of my despair with your filthy comparisons!”

I loved when she hissed at me. No blank stare now. If looks could kill, I’d be skewered like a shish kebab and served up on a platter. I did my best not to grin. She’d’ve taken it the wrong way.

Smacking my candy, I said in my grandest theatrical style, even going so far as to roll my R’s, “In a case, Dora Rose, where magic meets music, where both are abused and death lacks dignity, where the innocent suffer and a monster goes unchecked, it seems reasonable, I was going to say, to consult an expert. A magical musician, perhaps, who has suffered so much himself he cannot endure to watch the innocent undergo like torment.”

Ah, rhetoric. Swans, like rats, are helpless against it. Dora Rose twisted the braid at her shoulder, and lowered her ivory lashes. Early morning light wormed through my dirty windowpane. A few gray glows managed to catch the silver of her skin and set it gleaming.

My hands itched. In this shape, what I missed most was the sensitivity of my whiskers; my palms kept trying to make up for it. I leaned against the wall and scratched each palm vigorously in their turn with my dandy nails. Even in mortal form, these were sharp and black. I was vain about my nails and kept them polished. I wanted to run them though that fine, pale Swan Princess hair.

“Maurice.” Miraculously, Dora Rose was smiling. A contemptuous smile, yes, but a smile nonetheless. “You’re not saying you know a magical musician? You?”

Implicit in her tone: You wouldn’t know music if a marching band dressed ranks right up your nose.

I drew myself to my not very considerable height, and I tugged my scarlet jerkin straight, and I said to her, I said to Dora Rose, I said, “He happens to be my best friend!”

“Ah.”

“I saved his life down in Doornwold five years ago. The first people to repopulate the place were thieves and brigands, you know, and he wasn’t at all equipped to deal with . . . Well. That’s how I met Nicolas.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“And then we met again out back of Amandale, down in the town dump. He, uh, got me out of a pickle. A pickle jar, rather. One that didn’t have air holes. This was in my other shape, of course.”

“Of course,” she murmured, still with that trenchant silver smile.

“Nicolas is very shy,” I warned her. “So don’t you go making great big swan eyes at him or anything. No sudden movements. No hissing or flirting or swooning over your sweet little suicide plans. He had a rough childhood, did Nicolas. Spent the tenderest years of his youth under the Hill, and part of him never left it.”

“He has lived in Faerie but is not of it?” Now both Dora Rose’s eyebrows arched, winging nigh up to her hairline. “Is he mortal or not?”

I shrugged. “Not Folk, anyway—or not entirely. Maybe some blood from a ways back. Raven, I think. Or Crow. A drop or two of Fox. But he can’t slip a skin to scale or down or fur. Not Faerieborn, either, though from his talk it seems he’s got the run of the place. Has more than mortal longevity, that’s for sure. Among his other gifts. Don’t know how old he is. Suspect even he doesn’t remember, he’s been so long under the Hill. What he is, is bright to my nose, like a perfumery or a field of wildflowers. Too many scents to single out the source. But come on, Dora Rose; nothing’s more boring than describing a third party where he can’t blush to hear! Meet him and sniff for yourself.”

• • • •

Nicolas lived in a cottage in the lee of the Hill.

I say Hill, and I mean Hill. As fairy mounds go, this was the biggest and greenest, smooth as a bullfrog and crowned at the top with a circle of red toadstools the size of sycamores that glowed in the dark.

It’s not an easy Hill. You don’t want to look at it directly. You don’t want to stray too near, too casually, or you’ll end up asleep for a hundred years, or vanished out of life for seven, or tithed to the dark things that live under the creatures living under the Hill.

But Nicolas dwelled there peaceably enough, possibly because no one who ever goes there by accident gets very far before running off in the opposite direction, shock-haired and shrieking. Those who approach on purpose sure as hellfowl aren’t coming to bother the poor musician who lives in the Hill’s shadow. They come because they want to gounder, to seek their fortunes, to beg of the Faerie Queen some boon (poor sops), or to exchange the dirt and drudgery of their mortal lives for some otherworldly dream.

We Folk don’t truck much with Faerie. We belong to earth, wind, water, and sun just as much as mortals do, and with better right. For my part, anything that stinks of that glittering, glamorous Hillstuff gives me the heebie-jeebies. With the exception of Nicolas.

I left Dora Rose (not without her vociferous protestations) hiding in some shrubbery, and approached the cottage at a jaunty swagger. I didn’t bang. That would be rude, and poor Nicolas was so easily startled. Merely, I scratched at the door with my fine black nails. At the third scratch, Nicolas answered. He was dressed only in his long red underwear, his red-and-black hair standing all on end. He was sleepy-eyed and pillow-marked, but he smiled when he saw me and opened wide his door.

“Maurice, Maurice!” he cried in his voice that would strike the sirens dumb. “But I did not expect this! I do not have a pie!” and commenced bustling about his larder, assembling a variety of foods he thought might please me.

He knew me so well! The vittles consisted of a rind of old cheese, a heel of hard bread, the last of the apple preserves, and a slosh of sauerkraut. Truly a feast! Worthy of a Rat King! (If my Folk had kings. We don’t. Just as all swans are royalty, we rats are every last one of us a commoner and godsdamned proud of it.) Salivating with delight, I dove for the proffered tray. There was only one chair at the table. Leaving it to me, Nicolas sank to a crouch by the hearth. I grazed with all the greed of a man-and-rat who’s breakfasted solely on a single caramel. He watched with a sweet smile on his face, as if nothing had ever given him more pleasure than to feed me.

“Nicolas, my friend,” I told him, “I’m in a spot of trouble.”

The smile vanished in an instant, replaced by a look of intent concern. Nicolas hugged his red wool-clad knees to his chest and cocked his head, bright black eyes inquiring.

“See,” I said, “a few weeks back, I noticed something weird happening in the Maze Wood just south of town? Lots of mortal children trooping in and out of the corridors, dressed fancy. Two scent hounds. A wagon. All led by Henchman Hans and no less a person than the Mayor of Amandale herself. I got concerned, right? I like to keep an eye on things.”

Nicolas’s own concern darkened to a frown, a sadness of thunderclouds gathering on his brow. But all he said was, “You were snooping, Maurice!”

“All right, all right, Nicolas, so what if I was? Do you have any ale?”

Nicolas pulled a red-and-black tuft of his hair. “Um, I will check! One moment, Maurice!” He sprang off the ground with the agility of an eight-year-old and scurried for a small barrel in a corner by the cellar door. He set his ear to it as if listening for the spirit within.

“It’s from the Hill,” he warned softly.

I smacked my lips. “Bring it on!”

Faerie ale was the belchiest. Who said I wasn’t musical? Ha! Dora Rose’d never heard me burp out “The Lay of Kate and Fred” after bottoms-upping a pint of this stuff. Oh, crap. Dora Rose. She was still outside, awaiting my signal. Never keep a Swan Princess in the bushes. She’d be bound to get antsy and announce herself with trumpets. I accepted the ale and sped ahead with my tale.

“So I started camping out in that old juniper tree, right? You know the one? The juniper tree. In the Heart Glade.”

“Oh, yes.” Nicolas lowed that mournful reply, half-sung, half-wept. “The poor little ghost in the tree. He was too long trapped inside it. The tree became his shrine, and the ghost became a god. That was in the long, long ago. But I remember it all like yesterday. I go to play my pipe for him when I get too lonely. Sometimes, if the moon is right, he sings to me.”

Awright! Now we were getting somewhere! Dora Rose should be hearing this, she really should. But if I brought her in now, poor Nicolas’d clam up like a corpse on a riverbank.

“Hey, Nicolas?” I gnawed into a leathery apple. “You have any idea why Ulia Gol’d be burying a bunch of murdered Swan Folk out by the juniper tree, singing a ditty over the bodies, and digging them up again? Or why they should arise thereafter as self-playing instruments?”

Nicolas shook his head, wide-eyed. “No. Not if Ulia Gol did it. She’d have no power there.”

I spat out an apple seed. It flew across the room, careening off a copper pot. “Oh, right. Uh, I guess what I meant was, if she got a child to do it. A child with a shovel. First to bury the corpse, then weep over it, then dig it up again. While a chorus of twenty kiddlings sang over the grave.”

Nicolas hugged himself harder, shivering. “Maurice! They are not doing this? Maurice—they would not use the poor tree so!”

I leaned in, heel of bread in one hand, rind of cheese in the other. “Nicolas. Ulia Gol’s murdered most of a bevy of Swan Folk. You know, the one that winters at Lake Serenus? Cygnet, cob, and pen—twenty of them, dead as dead can be. She’s making herself an orchestra of bone instruments that play themselves so she won’t have to shell out for professional musicians. Or at least that’s her excuse this time. But you remember last year, right? With the foxes?”

Nicolas flinched.

“And before that,” I went on, “didn’t she go fishing all the talking trout from every single stream and wishing well? Are you sensing a pattern? ’Cause no one else seems to be—except for yours truly, the Incomparable Maurice. Now there’s only one swan girl left. One out of a whole bevy. And she’s . . . she’s my . . . The point is, Nicolas, we must do something.”

Nearly fetal in his corner by the ale barrel, Nicolas hid his face, shaking his head behind his hands. Before I could press him further, a silvery voice began to sing from the doorway.

The nanny-goat said to the little boy
Baa-baa, baa-baa I’m full
I’m a bale of hay and a grassy glade
All stuffed, all stuffed in wool
I can eat no more, kind sir, kind sir
Baa-baa, baa-baa my song
Not a sock, not a rock, not a fiddle-fern
I’ll be full all winter long.

By the end of the first verse, Nicolas had lifted his head. By the end of the second, he’d drawn a lanyard out of the collar of his long underwear. From this lanyard hung a slender silver pipe that dazzled the eye, though no sun shone in that corner of the cottage. When Dora Rose got to the third verse, he began piping along.

The little boy said to the nanny goat
Baa-baa, baa-baa all day
You’ll want to be fat as all of that
When your coat comes off in May!

By the time they reached the bridge of their impromptu set, I was dancing around the cottage in an ecstatic frenzy. The silver pipe’s sweet trills drove my limbs to great leaps and twists. Dora Rose danced, too, gasping for breath as she twirled and sang simultaneously. Nicolas stood in the center of the cottage, tapping his feet in time. The song ended, and Nicolas applauded, laughing for joy. Dora Rose gave him a solemn curtsy, which he returned with a shy bow. But as he slipped the silver pipe back beneath his underwear, I watched him realize that underwear was all he wore. Shooting a gray and stricken look my way, pretty much making me feel like I’d betrayed him to the headsman, he jumped into his tiny cot and pulled a ratty blanket over his head. Dora Rose glanced at me.

“Uh, Nicolas?” I said. “Me and Dora Rose’ll just go wait outside for a few minutes. You come on out when you got your clothes on, okay?”

“She’s a swan!” Nicolas called from under his cover. I patted a lump that was probably his foot.

“She needs your help, Nicolas. Her sister got turned into a harp yesterday. All her family are dead now. She’s next.”

At that point, Dora Rose took me by the ear and yanked me out of the cottage. I cringed—but not too much lest she loosen her grip. Dora Rose rarely touched me of her own volition.

“How dare you?” she whispered, the flush on her face like a frosted flower. “The Pied Piper? He could dance any Folk he pleased right to the death, and you pushed him? Maurice!”

“Aw, Dora Rose,” I wheedled, “he’s just a little sensitive is all. But he’s a good friend—the best! He’d never hurt me. Or mine.” She glared at me. I help up my hands. “My, you know, friends. Or whatever.”

Dora Rose shook her head, muttering, “I am friendly with a magical musician, he tells me. Who’s familiar with Faerie. Who knows about the Folk. He’ll help us, he tells me.” Her blue eyes blazed, and I quivered in the frenzy of her full attention. “You never said he was the Pied Piper, Maurice!”

I set my hands on my hips and leaned away. Slightly. She still had a grip on my ear, after all. “Because I knew you’d react like this! Completely unreasonable! Nicolas wouldn’t hurt a fly half-drowned in a butter dish! So he’s got a magic pipe, so what? The Faerie Queen gave it to him. Faerie Queen says, ‘Here, darling, take this; I made it for you,’ you don’t go refusing the thing. And once you have it, you don’t leave it lying around the house for someone else to pick up and play. It’s his livelihood, Dora Rose! And it’s a weapon, too. We’ll use it to protect you, if you’ll let us.”

Her eyebrows winged up, two perfect, pale arches. Her clutch on my ear began to twist. I squeaked out, “On another note, Dora Rose, forgive the pun”—she snorted as I’d meant her to, and I assumed my most earnest expression, which on my face could appear just a trifle disingenuous—“I have to say, your idea about singing nursery rhymes to calm him down was pretty great! Poor Nicolas! All he sees whenever he looks at a woman is the Faerie Queen. Scares him outta his wits. Can’t hardly speak, after. He’s good with kids, though. Kid stuff. Kid songs. You were right on track with that baa-baa tune of yours. He’s like a child himself, really . . .”

Dora Rose released my ear. More’s the pity.

“Maurice!” She jabbed a sharp finger at my nose, which was sharp enough to jab back. “One of these days!”

That was when Nicolas tiptoed from the cottage, sort of slinky-bashful. He was dressed in his usual beggar’s box motley, with his coat of bright rags and two mismatched boots. He had tried to flatten his tufted hair, but it stuck up defiantly all around his head. His black eyes slid to the left of where Dora Rose stood.

“Hi,” he said, scuffing the ground.

“It is a fine thing to meet you, Master Nicolas,” she returned with courtly serenity. “Bevies far and wide sing of your great musicianship. My own mother”—I saw a harsh movement in her pale throat as she swallowed—“watched you play once, and said she never knew such joy.”

“I’m sorry about your family,” Nicolas whispered. “I’m sure the juniper tree didn’t want to do it. It just didn’t understand.” His eyes met mine briefly, pleading. I gave him an encouraging go-ahead nod. Some of this story I knew already, but Nicolas could tell it better. He’d been around before it was a story, before it was history. He’d been alive when it was a current event.

Nicolas straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat.

“Your Folk winters at Lake Serenus. But perhaps, keeping mostly to yourselves, you do not know the story of the Maze Wood surrounding the lake. The tree at the center of the wood is also . . . also at the center of—of your family’s slaughter . . . You see, before he was the god in the tree, he was only a small boy. His stepmother murdered him. His little stepsister buried his bones at the roots of a sapling juniper and went every day to water his grave with her tears.

“To comfort her, the boy’s ghost and the juniper tree became one. The young tree was no wiser than the boy—trees understand things like rain and wind and birds. So the ghost and the tree together transformed the boy’s bones into a beautiful bird, hoping this would lighten his sister’s heart and fly far to sing of his murder.

“That was in the long, long ago. Later, but still long ago, the villagers of what was then a tiny village called Amandale began to worship the ghost in the tree. The ghost became a god. Those whose loved ones had been murdered would bring their bones there. The god would turn these wretched bones to instruments that sang the names of their murderers so loudly, so relentlessly, that the murderers were brought to justice just to silence the music.

“Many generations after this, these practices and even the god itself were all but forgotten. The juniper tree’s so old now all it remembers are bones and birds, tears and songs. But the Mayor of Amandale must have read the story somewhere in the town archives. Learned of this old magic, the miracle. And then the Mayor, then she . . . she . . .”

A small muscle in Nicolas’s jaw jumped. Suddenly I saw him in a different light, as if he, like his silver pipe, had an inner dazzle that needed no sunlight to evoke it. That dazzle had an edge on it like a broken bottle. Handle this man wrong, and he would cut you, though he wept to do it.

“The Mayor,” said the Pied Piper, “is abusing the juniper tree’s ancient sorrow. It is wrong. Very wrong.”

This time he met Dora Rose’s gaze directly, his black eyes bright and cold. “She is no better than the first little boy’s killer. She has hunted your Folk to their graves. As birds and murder victims in one, they make the finest instruments. The children of Amandale helped her to do this while their parents stood by. They are all complicit.”

“Not all,” I put in. Credit where it’s due. “Three children stood against her. Punished for it, of course.”

Nicolas gave me a nod. “They will be spared.”

“Spared?” Dora Rose echoed. But Nicolas was already striding off toward the Maze Wood with his pace that ate horizons. Me and Dora Rose, we had to follow him at a goodly clip.

“This,” I whispered to her from one corner of my grin, “is gonna be good.”

• • • •

The maze part of the Maze Wood is made of these long and twisty walls of thorn. It’s taller than the tallest of Amandale’s four watchtowers and thicker than the fortress wall, erected a few hundred years ago to protect the then-new cathedral of Amandale. But Brotquen, the jolly golden Harvest Goddess in whose honor the cathedral had been built, went out of style last century. Now Brotquen Cathedral is used to store grain—not so big a step down from worshipping it, if you ask me—and I’m quite familiar with its environs. Basically the place is a food mine for yours truly and his pack, Folk and fixed alike. And the stained glass windows are pretty, too.

Like Nicolas said, the Maze Wood’s been there before Brotquen, before her cathedral, before the four towers and the fortress wall. It was sown back in the olden days when the only god in these parts was the little one in the juniper tree. I don’t know if the maze was planted to honor that god or to confuse it, keep its spirit from wandering too far afield in the shape of a fiery bird, singing heartbreaking melodies of its murder. Maybe both.

Me and the Maze Wood get along all right. Sure, it’s scratched off some of my fur. Sure, its owls and civets have tried making a meal of me. But nothing under these trees has got the better of me yet. I know these woods almost as well as I know the back streets of Amandale. I’m a born explorer, though at heart I’m city rat, not woodland. That’s what squirrels are for. “Think of us as rats in cute suits,” a squirrel friend of mine likes to say. Honestly, I don’t see that squirrels are all that adorable myself.

But as well as I knew the Maze Wood, Nicolas intuited it.

He moved through its thorny ways like he would the “Willful Child’s Reel,” a song he could play backwards and blindfolded. Nicolas took shortcuts through corridors I’d never seen and seemed to have some inner needle pointing always to the Heart Glade the way some people can find true north. In no time at all, we came to the juniper tree.

Nicolas went right up to it and flung himself to the ground, wrapping his arms as far about the trunk as he could reach. There he sobbed with all the abandon of a child, like Froggit had sobbed right before they cut out his tongue.

Dora Rose hung back. She looked impassive, but I thought she was embarrassed. Swans don’t cry.

After several awkward minutes of this, Nicolas sat up. He wiped his face, drew the silver pipe from his shirt, and played a short riff as if to calm himself. I jittered at the sound, and Dora Rose jumped, but neither of us danced. He didn’t play for us that time but for the tree.

The juniper tree began to glow, as it had glowed yesterday when the Swan Hunters sang up Elinore’s bones. The mossy ground at the roots turned white as milk. Then a tiny bird, made all of red-and-gold fire, shot out of the trunk to land on Nicolas’s shoulder. Nicolas stopped piping but did not remove the silver lip from his mouth. Lifting its flickering head, the bird opened its beak and began to sing in a small, clear, plaintive voice:

Stepmother made a simple stew
Into the pot my bones she threw
When father finished eating me
They buried my bones at the juniper tree
Day and night Stepsister weeps
Her grief like blood runs red, runs deep
Kywitt! Kywitt! Kywitt! I cry
What a beautiful bird am I!

Nicolas’s expression reflected the poor bird’s flames. He stroked its tiny head, bent his face, and whispered something in its ear.

“He’s telling the god about your dead Folk,” I said to Dora Rose with satisfaction. “Now we’ll really see something!”

I should’ve been born a prophet, for as soon as Nicolas stopped speaking, the bird toppled from his shoulder into his outstretched palm and lay there in a swoon for a full minute before opening its beak to scream. Full-throated, human, anguished.

I covered my ears, wishing they really had been made of tin. But Dora Rose stared as if transfixed. She nodded once, slowly, as if the ghost bird’s scream matched the sound she’d been swallowing all day.

The juniper tree blazed up again. The glowing white ground roiled like a tempest-turned sea. Gently, so gently, Nicolas brought his cupped hands back up to the trunk, returning the bird to its armor of shaggy bark. As the fiery bird vanished into the wood, the tree itself began to sing. The Heart Glade filled with a voice that was thunderous and marrow-deep.

Swan bones changed to harp and fife
Sobbing music, robbed of life
String and drum and horn of bone
Leave them not to weep alone
Set them in a circle here
None for three nights interfere
From my branches let one hang
Swan in blood and bone and name
Bring the twenty whose free will
Dared to use my magic ill
Dance them, drive them into me
Pick the fruit from off this tree!

The light disappeared. The juniper sagged and seemed to sigh.

Nicolas put his pipe away and bowed his head.

Dora Rose turned to me, fierceness shining from her.

“Maurice,” she said, “you heard the tree. We must bring the bones here. I must hang for three days. You must keep Ulia Gol and Hans away from the Heart Glade for that time, and bring those twenty young Swan Hunters to me. Quickly! We have no time to waste.”

And here the heart-stricken and love-sore child I once was rose up from the depths of me like its very own bone instrument.

“Must I, Ladybird?”

Did I sound peevish? I hardly knew. My voice cracked like a boy soprano whose balls’d just dropped, thus escaping the castrating knife and opium bath and a life of operatic opulence. Peevish, yes. Peevish it was.

“Must I really? So easy, don’t you think, to steal an orchestra right out from under an ogre’s nose? To keep Ulia Gol from tracking it back here. To lure twenty children all into the Maze Wood without a mob of parents after us. That’ll take more than wiles, Princess. That’ll take tactics. And why should I do any of this, eh? For you, Dora Rose? For the sake of a friend? What kind of friend are you to me?”

Nicolas stared from me to Dora Rose, wide-eyed. He had placed a hand over his pipe and kneaded it nervously against his chest. Dora Rose also stared, her face draining of excitement, of grief nearly avenged, of bright rage barely contained. All I saw looking into that shining oval was cool, contemptuous royalty. That was fine. Let her close herself off to me. See if that got her my aid in this endeavor.

“I’m gonna ask you something.” I drew closer, taking her slack silver hand in mine. I even pressed it between my itching palms. “If it were me, Dora Rose, if I’d come to Lake Serenus before your courtly bevy and said to you, ‘Dear Princess, Your Highness, my best old pal! Mayor Ulia Gol’s exterminating the Rat Folk of Amandale. She’s trapping us and torturing us and making bracelets of our tails. Won’t you help me stop her? For pity’s sake? For what I once was to you, even if that was only a pest?’

“What would you have said to me, Dora Rose, if I had come to you so?”

Dora Rose turned her face away, but did not remove her hand. “I would have said nothing, Maurice. I would have driven you off. Do you not know me?”

“Yes, Dora Rose.” I squeezed her hand, happy that it still held mine. Was it my imagination, or did she squeeze back? Yup. That was definitely a squeeze. More like a vise, truth be told. I loved a vise. Immediately I began feeling more charitable. That was probably her intention.

“Elinore now,” I reflected, “Elinore would’ve intervened on my behalf.” Dora Rose’s head turned cobra-quick. Had she fangs enough and time, I’d be sporting several new apertures in my physiognomy. I went on anyway. “The nice sister, that Elinore. Always sweet as a Blood Haven peach—for all she loathed me tail to toe. You Swan Folk would’ve come to our aid on Elinore’s say so, mark my words, Dora Rose.”

“Then,” said Dora Rose with freezing slowness, her grip on my hand yet sinewy and relentless, “you will help me for the sake of my dead twin, Maurice? For the help my sister Elinore would have given you had our places been reversed?”

I sighed. “Don’t you know me, Ladybird? No. I wouldn’t do it for Elinore. Not for gold or chocolate. Not for a dozen peachy swan girls and their noblesse oblige. I’ll do it for you, of course. Always did like you better than Elinore.”

“You,” scoffed Dora Rose with a curling lip, flinging my hand from hers, “are the only one who ever did, Maurice.”

I shrugged. It was true.

“As a young cygnet, I feared this was because our temperaments were too alike.”

I snorted, inordinately pleased. “Yeah, well. Don’t go telling my mama I act like a Swan Princess. She’ll think she didn’t raise me right.”

From his place near the juniper tree, Nicolas cleared his throat. “Are we, are we all friends again? Please?” He smoothed one of his long brown hands over the bark. “There’s so much to be done, and all of it so dark and sad. Best to do it quickly, before we drown in sorrow.”

Dora Rose dropped him a curtsy and included me in it with a dip of her chin. My heart leapt in my chest. Other parts of me leapt, too, but I won’t get into that.

“At your convenience, Master Piper,” said she. “Maurice.”

“Dark work? Sad?” I cried. “No such thing! Say, rather, a lark! The old plague days of Doornwold’ll be nothing to it! My Folk scurry at the chance to run amuck. If you hadn’t’ve happened along, Dora Rose, with your great tragedy and all, I’d’ve had to invent an excuse to misbehave. Of such stuff is drama made! Come on, you two. I have a plan.”

• • • •

We threw Nicolas’s old tattercoat over Dora Rose’s silver gown and urchined up her face with mud. I stuffed her pale-as-lace hair under my wharf boy’s cap and didn’t even mind when she turned and pinched me for pawing at her too ardently. Me in the lead, Dora Rose behind, Nicolas bringing up the rear, we marched into Amandale like three mortal-born bumpkins off for a weekend in the big city.

Dwelling by the Hill, Nicolas had lived as near neighbor to Amandale for I don’t know how many years. But he was so often gone on his tours, in cities under the Hill that made even the Queen’s City seem a hermit’s hovel, that he wandered now through Amandale’s busy gates with widening and wonder-bright eyes. His head swiveled like it sat on an owl’s neck. The woebegone down-bend of his lips began a slow, gladdening, upward trend that was heartbreaking to watch. So I stole only backward glances, sidelong like.

“Maurice.” He hurried to my side as we passed a haberdashery.

“Yes, Nicolas?”

“You really live here?”

“All my life.”

“Does it,” he stooped to speak directly in my ear, “does it ever stop singing?”

I grinned over at Dora Rose, who turned her face away to smile. “If by singing you mean stinking, then no. This is a typical day in Amandale, my friend. A symphony of odors!” He looked so puzzled that I took pity and explained, “According to the princess over there, I’m one who can only ever hear music through my nose.”

“Ah!” Nicolas’s black eyes beamed. “I see. Yes! You’re a synesthete!”

Before I could reply, a fire-spinner out front of Cobblersawl’s Cakes and Comfits caught his eye, and Nicolas stopped walking to burst into wild applause. The fire-spinner grinned and embarked upon a particularly intricate pattern of choreography.

No one was exempt, I realized. Not me, and not the pretty fire-spinner. Not even Dora Rose. Plainly it was impossible to keep from smiling at Nicolas when Nicolas was pleased about something. I nudged Dora Rose.

“Hear that, Ladybird? I’m a synesthete!”

“Maurice, if you ever met a synesthete, you’d probably try to eat it.”

“Probably. Would it look anything like you?”

Dora Rose did not dignify this with a response but whacked the back of my head, and her tiny smile twisted into something perilously close to a grin. We ducked into the bakery, pulling Nicolas after us so he wouldn’t start piping along to the fire-spinner’s sequences, sending her off to an early death by flaming poi.

One of the elder Cobblersawl children—Ilse, her name was—stood at the bread counter, looking bored but dutiful. A softhearted lass, our Ilse. Good for a scrap of cheese on occasion. Not above saving a poor rodent if said rodent happened to be trapped under her big brother’s boot. She’d not recognize me in this shape, of course, but she might have a friendly feeling for me if I swaggered up to her with a sparkle in my beady little eyes and greeted her with a wheedling, “Hallo, Miss . . .”

She frowned. “No handouts. Store policy.”

“No, you misunderstand. We’re looking for . . . for Froggit? Young Master Froggit Cobblersawl? We have business with him.” Dora Rose poked me between my shoulder blades. Her nails were as sharp as mine. “If you please?” I squeaked.

Ilse’s frown deepened to a scowl. “Froggit’s sick.”

I bet he was. I’d be sick too if I’d swallowed half my tongue.

“Sick of . . . politics maybe?” I waggled my eyebrows.

A smell came off the girl like vaporized cheddar. Fear. Sweaty, stinky, delicious fear.

“If you’re from the Mayor,” Ilse whispered, “tell her that Mama spanked Froggit for not behaving as he ought. We know we’re beholden. We know we owe the fancy new shop to her. And—and our arrangement to provide daily bread to the houses on Merchant Prince Row is entirely due her benevolence. Please, Papa cried so hard when he heard how Froggit failed us. We were so proud when his name came up in the Swan Hunter lottery. Really, it’s such an honor, we know it’s an honor, to work for the Mayor on our very own orchestra, but—it’s just he’s so young. He didn’t understand. Didn’t know, didn’t know better. But I’m to take his place next hunt. I will be the twentieth hunter. I will do what he couldn’t. I promise.” She unfisted her hands and opened both palms in supplication. “Please don’t take him to prison. Don’t disappear him like you did . . .”

She swallowed whatever she was about to say when Dora Rose stepped forward. Removing my cap, she shook out that uncanny hair of hers and held Ilse’s gaze. Silence swamped the bakery as Ilse realized we weren’t Ulia Gol’s not-so-secret police.

“I want to thank him,” Dora Rose said. “That is all. The last swan they killed was my sister.”

“Oh,” Ilse whimpered. “Oh, you shouldn’t be here. You really shouldn’t be here.”

“Please,” said Dora Rose.

Her shaking fingers glimmering by the light pouring off the swan girl’s hair, Ilse pointed out a back door. We left the bakery as quickly as we could, not wanting to discomfit her further, or incite her to rouse the alarm.

The exit led into a private courtyard behind the bakery. Froggit was back by the whitewashed outhouse, idly sketching cartoons upon it with a stubby bit of charcoal. Most of these involved the Mayor and Hans in various states of decay, although in quite a few of them, the Swan Huntress Ocelot played a putrescent role. Froggit’s shoulder blades scrunched when our shadows fell over him, but he did not turn around.

I opened my mouth to speak, but it was Nicolas who dropped to the ground at Froggit’s side, crossing his legs like a fortune-teller and studying the outhouse wall with rapt interest.

“But this is extraordinary! It must be preserved! They will have to remove this entire apparatus to a museum. What, in the meantime, is to be done about waterproofing?” Nicolas examined the art in minute detail, his nose almost touching the graffitied boards. “What to do, what to do,” he muttered.

Taking his charcoal stub, Froggit scrawled, “BURN IT!” in childish writing over his latest cartoon. Then he scowled at Nicolas, who widened his eyes at him. Nicolas began nodding, at first slowly, then with increasing vigor.

“Oh, yes! Indeed! Yes, of course! Art is best when ephemeral, don’t you think? How your admirers will mourn its destruction. How they will paint their faces with the ashes of your art. And you will stand so”—Nicolas hopped up to demonstrate—“arms crossed, with your glare that is like the glare of a tiger, and they will sob and wail and beg you to draw again—just once more please, Master Froggit—but you shall break your charcoal and their hearts in one snap. Yes! You will take all this beauty from them, as they have taken your tongue. I see. It is stunning. I salute you.”

So saying, Nicolas drew out his pipe and began a dirge.

When he finished many minutes later, me and Dora Rose collapsed on the ground, sweating from the excruciatingly stately waltz we’d endured together. Well, she’d endured. I rather enjoyed it, despite never having waltzed in my life, least of all in a minor key.

Froggit himself, who much to his consternation had started waltzing with an old rake, let it fall against the outhouse wall and eyeballed the lot of us with keen curiosity and not a little apprehension. What did he see when he looked at us, this little boy without a tongue?

Nicolas sat in the mud again. This made Froggit, still standing, the taller of the two, and Nicolas gazed up at him with childlike eyes.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s my silver pipe. Magic, you see. Given me by Her Gracious Majesty, Empress of Faerie, Queen of the Realms Beneath the Hill. It imparts upon me power over the creatures of land, sea, air, and fire. Folk and fixed, and everything between. But when I pass into the Hill, my pipe has no power. Under the Hill it is not silver but bone that sings to the wild blood of the Faerieborn. Had I a bone pipe, I might dance them all to their deaths, those Shining Ones who cannot die. But I have no pipe of bone. Just this.”

Nicolas’s face took on a taut look. Almost, I thought, one of unbearable longing. His knuckles whitened on his pipe. Then he shook himself and dredged up a smile from unfathomable depths, though it was a remote, pathetic, tremulous thread of a thing.

“But here, above the Hill,” he continued as if he’d never paused, “it is silver that ensorcels. Silver that enspells. I could pipe my friend the rat Maurice into the Drukkamag River and drown him. See that Swan Princess over there? Her I could pirouette right off a cliff, and not even her swanskin wings could save her. You, little boy, I could jig you up onto a rooftop and thence into the sky, whence you’d fall, fall, fall. But I will not!” Nicolas added as Froggit’s round brown eyes flashed wider. “Destroy an artist such as yourself? Shame on me! How could I even think it? I have the greatest respect for you, Master Froggit!”

But Froggit, after that momentary alarm, seemed unafraid. In fact, he began to look envious. He pointed first to the silver pipe, then to his charcoal caricature of Mayor Ulia Gol, dripping gore and missing a few key limbs.

His wide mouth once more woebegone, Nicolas burst out, “Oh, but she is wicked! Wicked! She has an ogre’s heart and a giant’s greed. She is a monster, and we must rid this world of monsters. For what she did to the juniper tree, that alone deserves a pair of iron shoes baked oven-bright, and four and twenty blackbirds to pluck out her eyes. But for what she has done to you . . . and to the swans and the foxes and the trout. Oh! I would break my pipe upon her throat if I . . . But.”

Drawing a shaky breath, Nicolas hid his thin face in rigid hands.

“No. I shall not be called upon for that. Not this time. Not today. No. No, Nicolas, you may stay your hand and keep to your music for now. Maurice the Incomparable has a plan. The role of Nicolas promises to be quite small this time. Just a song. Just the right little song. Or the wrong one. The wrongest song of all.”

Froggit sat beside Nicolas and touched a trembling hand to his shoulder. Nicolas didn’t take his hands from his face, but suddenly bright black eyes peeped between his fingers.

“Your part is bigger than mine, Master Froggit. If you’ll play it. Throw in with us. You have no tongue to speak, but you have hands to help, and we’d be proud to have your help.”

Froggit stared. At the huddled Piper. At proud Dora Rose standing like a silver statue in the small courtyard. At my grin that had the promise of carnage behind it. Back to Nicolas, whose hands fell away to reveal an expression so careworn and sorrowful and resolute that it terrified me, who knew what it meant. I rubbed my hands together, licking my lips. The boy took up his charcoal stub and wrote two words on the outhouse boards.

One was “Greenpea.” The other “Possum.”

I stepped in, before Nicolas asked if this were a recipe for the boy’s favorite stew and spun off on another tangent about the virtues of Faerie spices versus mortal.

“Of course your friends are invited, Master Froggit!” I said. “Couldn’t do it without ’em! You three and we three, all together now.” I hooked Dora Rose’s elbow and drew her nearer. She complied, but not without a light kick to my ankle. “Your job today, Master Froggit, is to take our resident Swan Princess around to meet Miss Greenpea and Miss Possum. They’ve sacrificed a pair of legs and eyes between them, haven’t they, by refusing to help murder swans?”

Froggit nodded, his soft jaw clenching. What with the swelling of his truncated tongue, that must’ve meant a whopping mouthful of pain. Boy should’ve been born a rat!

“You’re just what we need. Old enough to know the town, young enough to be ignored. Embittered, battle-scarred, ready for war. Listen up, Master Froggit. You and your friends and Dora Rose are gonna be the ones to, uh, liberate those pretty bone instruments from Orchestra Hall. You must do this, and you must return them to the Maze Wood tonight. It all has to be timed perfectly. Dora Rose will tell you why. Can you do this thing?”

Dora Rose put her hand on Froggit’s shoulder when his panicked glance streaked to her. “Fear not, princeling,” she said, as though soothing a cygnet. “Have not we wings and wits enough between us?”

Before the kid could lose his nerve, I sped on, “Me and Nicolas will be the distraction. We’re gonna set Amandale hopping, starting this afternoon. No one will have time to sniff you out, I promise—no matter what shenanigans you four get up to. We’ll meet you back in the Maze Wood in three nights’ time, with the rest of . . . of what we need. You know where. The juniper tree.”

Froggit nodded. His brown eyes filled with tears, but they did not fall. I looked at Dora Rose, who was twisting her hair back up under my wharf boy’s cap and refreshing the dirt on her face.

“Help her,” I told the kid, too quietly for Dora Rose to overhear. “She’ll need you. Tonight most of all.”

Froggit watched my face a moment more, then nodded with firm decision. His excitement smelled like ozone. He shoved his charcoal stub into his pocket and stood up, wiping his palms on his cutoff trousers. Solemnly, he offered his hand to Nicolas, who clasped it in both of his, then transferred it over to Dora Rose. She smiled down, and Froggit’s gaze on her became worshipful, if worship could hold such bitter regret. I knew that look.

Stupid to be jealous of a tongueless, tousled, char-smudged bed wetter. Bah.

“Take care of each other,” Nicolas admonished them.

And so, that Cobblersawl kid and my friend the Swan Princess-in-disguise made their way down a dark alley that teemed with the sort of refuse I relished. Until they disappeared from my sight.

“Shall we?” Nicolas’s voice was soft and very dreadful behind me.

“Play on, Pied Piper,” said I.

Nicolas set silver lip to scarlet mouth and commenced the next phase of our plan.

• • • •

Have you ever seen a rat in a waste heap? The rustle of him, the nibble, the nestle, the scrabble and scrape. How he leaps, leaps straight up as if jerked by a string from the fathoms of that stinking stuff should a clamor startle him? How swift he is. How slinking sly. Faster than a city hawk who makes her aerie in the clock towers and her dinner of diseased pigeons. A brief bolt of furry black lightning he is, with onyx for eyes and tiny red rubies for pupils.

Now imagine this natty rat, this rattiest of rats, with his broken tail, his chewed-looking fur, imagine him as he often is, with a scrap of something vile in his mouth, imagine him right in front of you, sitting on your pillow and watching you unblinkingly as you yawn yourself awake in the morning.

Imagine him.

Then multiply him.

There is a reason more than one of us is called a swarm.

• • • •

Amandale, there will be no Swan Hunt for you today.

Nor will bread be baked, nor cakes be made, nor cookies, biscuits, doughnuts, nor pies. The smell arising from your ovens, Amandale, is singed fur and seared rodent meat, and all your dainty and delectable desserts bear teeth marks.

No schools remain in session. What teacher can pontificate on topics lofty and low when rats sit upon her erasers, scratch inside the stiff desks, run to and from the windowsills, and chew through whole textbooks in their hunger for equations, for history, for language and binding glue and that lovely woody wood pulp as soft and sweet as rose petals?

The blacksmith’s hand is swollen from the bite he received last night as he reached for the bellows to stoke his fire. The apple seller has fled from fear of what he found in his apple barrels. The basket maker burns in his bed with fever from an infected breakfast he bolted without noticing it had been shared already by the fine fellows squatting in his larder. I’m afraid the poor chimney sweep is scarred for life. And no, I don’t mean that metaphorically.

The Wheelbarrow Mollys and the Guild of Bricklayers are out in the streets with their traps and their terriers. Poor fools, the futility! They might get a few dozen of us, maybe a few hundred. They might celebrate their catch that night with ales all around. But what’s a few? We are thousands. Tens of thousands. Millions. The masses. We have come from our hidey-holes and haystacks. We are out in force.

So what if the local butcher flaunts his heap of fresh sausage stuffing, product of today’s rat-catching frenzy? We’re not above eating our own when we taste as good as sausages! And we’re not above petty vengeance, either. You, smug butcher, you won’t sleep cold tonight. No, sir. You’ll sleep enfolded in the living fur of my family, Folk and fixed alike, united, yellow of tooth and spry of whisker. Resolved.

In the midst of mothers bellowing at those of us sniffing bassinets and cradles, of fathers shrieking like speared boars as they step into boots that bite back, of merchants sobbing and dairymaids cursing and monks chanting prayers of exorcism, there is a softer sound, too, all around. A sound only we rats can hear.

Music.

It is the Pied Piper, and he plays for us.

He’s there in a corner, one rat on his boot-top, two in his pocket. That’s me right there, scurrying and jiving all up and down his arms and shoulders, like a nervous mama backstage of her darling’s first ballet recital. Oh, this is first-rate. This is drama! And I am the director.

Amandale, you do not see Nicolas, the red in his black hair smoldering like live embers in a bed of coal, his black eyes downcast and dreamy, his one rat-free boot tapping time. He’s keeping us busy, keeping us brave, making us hop and heave to.

Amandale, you do not see Nicolas, playing his song, doing his best to destroy you for a day.

Or even for three.

• • • •

On the second Night of the Rats (as the citizens of Amandale called our little display), Mayor Ulia Gol summoned a town meeting in Orchestra Hall.

Sometime after lunch that day, I’d fleshed back into man-shape, with two big plugs of cotton batting in my ears. This made me effectively deaf, but at least I wasn’t dancing. The point was to stick as close to Ulia Gol as possible without ending up in a rat catcher’s burlap bag. To that end I entrenched myself in the growing mob outside the mayoral mansion and slouched there for hours till my shadow stretched like a giant from the skylands. As reward for my patience, I witnessed the moment Henchman Hans brought Ulia Gol news that the rat infestation had destroyed her bone orchestra.

“All that’s left, Madame Mayor,” moaned poor Hans (I’m not great at reading lips, but I got the gist), “is bits of bone and a few snarls of black hair.”

Ulia Gol’s florid face went as putridly pink as her wig. Her shout was so loud I heard her through the cotton batting all the way to my metatarsals. “Town meeting—tonight—eight o’ clock—Orchestra Hall—OR ELSE!”

I ran back to report to Nicolas, who laughed around the lip of his pipe. Slapping my forehead, I cried, “Clever, clever! Why didn’t I think of it? Manufacture false evidence; blame the rats! It’ll keep thief-hunters out of the Maze Wood for sure. Did you think that up, Nicolas?”

Pink-cheeked, Nicolas shook his head and kept playing.

“Wasn’t Dora Rose,” I mused. “She’d view leaving fragments behind as sacrilege. One of our stalwart recruits, then. Froggit? He’s great, but he’s kind of young for that level of . . . Or, I suppose it could’ve been Possum’s idea. Don’t know her so well. Always thought her one of your sweet, quiet types, Possum.” Readjusting my cotton batting, I mulled on the puzzle before settling on my final hypothesis.

“Greenpea. Greenpea, I’ll grant you, has the brain for such a scheme. What a firecracker! Back when the Swan Hunt started, she was the most vocal opposition in town. Has a kindness for all animals, does Greenpea. Nearly took Hans’s head off with the shovel when he tried to make her dig up that first murdered cob. Ulia Gol took it back from her, though. Broke both her legs so bad the surgeon had to cut ’em off at the knee. Fear of festering, you see. Least, that’s what he said. But he’s Ulia Gol’s creature, badly gone as Hans. Yup, I’ll bet the hair and bone were Greenpea’s notion. Little minx. I’d like to take her paw and give it a shake. Oh, but hey, Nicolas! We’d best get a move on. You haven’t eaten all day, and the sun’s nearly down. Mayor Ulia Gol’s called a town meeting in a few hours regarding the rat conundrum. I’ll fur down and find a bench to hide under. That way I’ll be ready for you.”

Slipping the silver pipe under his patched tunic, Nicolas advised, “Don’t get stomped.”

By this time, the rats of Amandale were in such a frenzy it wouldn’t much matter if he stopped playing for an hour or two. Most of the Folk rats would come to their senses and slip out of town while the getting was good. Likely they’d spend the next few weeks with wax stoppers in their ears and a great distaste for music of any kind. But they’d be back. By and by, they’d all come back.

The fixed rats, now . . . Smart beasts they may be, those inferior little cousins of mine, but their brains have only ever been the size of peas. Good thing they reproduce quickly’s all I’m saying. ’Cause for the sake of drama and Dora Rose—they are going down.

• • • •

The Mayor of Amandale began, “This meeting is now in—” when an angry mother shot to her feet and shouted over her words. It was the chandler, wailing toddler held high overhead like a trophy or oblation.

“Look at my Ruby! Look at her! See that bite on her face? That’ll mark her the rest of her natural life.”

“Won’t be too long,” observed a rouged bawd. “Wounds like that go bad as runoff from a graveyard.”

The blacksmith added, “That’s if the rats don’t eat her alive first.”

The noise in Orchestra Hall surged. A large, high-ceilinged chamber it was, crammed with padded benches and paneled in mahogany. Front and center on the raised stage stood Mayor Ulia Gol, eyes squinting redly as she gaveled the gathering to order.

“Friends! Friends!” Despite the red look in her eyes, her voice held that hint of laughter that made people love her. “Our situation is dire, yes. We are all distressed, yes. But I must beg you now, each and every one of you, to take a deep breath.”

She demonstrated.

Enchantment in the expansion and recession of her bosom. Sorcery in her benevolent smile. Hypnosis in the red beam of her eye, pulsing like a beating heart. The crowd calmed. Began to breathe. From my place beneath the bench, I twitched my fine whiskers. Ulia Gol was by far her truer self in the Heart Glade, terrorizing the children of Amandale into murdering Swan Folk. This reassuring woman was hardly believable. A stage mirage. The perfect politician.

“There,” cooed the Mayor, looking downright dotingly upon her constituents, “that’s right. Tranquility in the face of disaster is our civic duty. Now, in order to formulate appropriate measures against this rodent incursion as well as set in motion plans for the recovery of our wounded”—she ticked off items on her fingers—“and award monetary restitution to the hardest-hit property owners, we must keep our heads. I am willing to work with you. For you. That’s why you elected me!”

Cool as an ogre picking her teeth with your pinkie finger. No plan of mine could stand long against a brainstorming session spearheaded by Ulia Gol at her glamoursome best. But I had a plan. And she didn’t know about it. So I was still a step ahead.

Certain human responses can trump even an ogre’s fell enchantments, no matter how deftly she piles on those magical soporific agents. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath of my own, I darted up the nearest trouser leg—

And bit.

The scream was all I ever hoped a scream would be.

Benches upturned. Ladies threw their skirts over their heads. The man I’d trespassed upon kicked a wall, trying to shake me out of his pants. I slid and skittered and finally flew across the room. Something like or near or in my rib cage broke, because all of a sudden the simple act of gasping became a pain in my everything.

Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t . . .

There came a wash of sound. Scarlet pain turned silver. My world became a dream of feathers. I saw Dora Rose, all downed up in swanskin, swimming across Lake Serenus. Ducking her long, long neck beneath the waves. Disappearing. Emerging as a woman, silver and naked-pale, with all her long hair gleaming down. She could dance atop the waves in this form, barefoot and unsinkable, a star of the Lake Serenus Water Ballet.

I came to myself curled in the center of the Pied Piper’s palm. He had the silver pipe in his other hand as if he’d just been playing it. Orchestra Hall had fallen silent.

This was Nicolas as I’d never seen him. This was Nicolas of the Realms Beneath the Hill. His motley rags seemed grander the way he wore them than Ulia Gol’s black satin robes with the big pink toggles and purple flounce. His hair was like the flint-and-fire crown of some Netherworld King. Once while drunk on Faerie ale he’d told me—in strictest confidence of course—that since childhood the Faerie Queen had called him “Beautiful Nicolas” and seated him at her right hand during her Midnight Revels. I’d snorted to hear that, replying, “Yeah, right. Your ugly mug?” which made him laugh and laugh. I’d been dead serious, though; I know what beautiful looks like, and its name is Dora Rose, not Nicolas. But now I could see how the Faerie Queen might just have a point. So. Yeah. Kudos to her. I suppose.

Nicolas’s smile flashed from his dark face like the lamp of a lighthouse. His black eyes flickered with a fiendish inner fire.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of Amandale!” Sweeping himself into a bow, he managed to make both pipe and rat natural parts of his elegance, as if we stood proxy for the royal scepter and orb he’d misplaced.

“Having had word of your problem, I came straightway to help. We are neighbors of sorts; I live in the lee of the Hill outside your lovely town. You may have heard my name.” Nicolas paused, just long enough. Impeccable timing. “I am the Pied Piper. I propose to pipe your rats away.”

So saying, he set me on the floor and brought up his pipe again.

I danced—but it was damned difficult. Something sharp inside me poked other, softer parts of me. I feared the coppery wetness foaming the corners of my mouth meant nothing salubrious for my immediate future. Still, I danced. How could I help it? He played for me.

Nicolas, who at his worst was so sensitive he often achieved what seemed a kind of feverish telepathy, was eerily attuned to my pain. His song shifted, ever so slightly. Something in my rib cage clicked. He played a song not only for me but for my bones as well. And my bones danced back into place.

Burning, burning.

Silver swanfire starfall burning.

Jagged edges knitted. Bones snapped back together. Still I danced. And inside me, his music danced, too, healing up my hurts.

Nicolas took his mouth from the pipe. “I am willing, good Citizens of Amandale, to help you. As you see, rats respond to my music. I can make them do what I wish! Or what you wish, as the case may be.”

On cue, released from his spell, I made a beeline for a crack in the wall. A sharp note from his pipe brought me up short, flipped me over, and sent me running back in the other direction. I can’t sweat, but I did feel the blood expanding my tail as my panicked body heated up.

“For free?” called the chandler, whose wounded babe had finally stopped wailing for fascination of Nicolas’s pipe.

“For neighborliness?” cackled the bawd.

Nicolas scooped me up off the floor. He made it look like another bow. “Alas, no. Behold me in my rags; I cannot afford charity. But for a token fee only, I will do this for you!”

Me he dangled by the engorged tail. Them he held by the balls. Oh, he had them. Well-palmed and squeezing. (Hoo-boy, did that bring back a great memory! There’d been this saucy rat girl named Melanie a few years back, and did she ever know how to do things with her paws . . .)

Mayor Ulia Gol slinked out from behind her podium. Bright-eyed and treacherous and curious as a marten in a chicken hut, she toyed with her gavel. Her countenance was welcoming, even coquettish.

“A Hero from the Hill!” She laughed her deep laughter that brought voters to the ballot box by the hordes. “Come to rescue our troubled Amandale in its time of need.”

“Just a musician, Madame Mayor.” Nicolas’s dire and delicate voice was pitched to warm the cockles and slicken the thighs. “But better than average perhaps—at least where poor, dumb animals are concerned.”

“And, of course, musicians must be paid!” Her lip curled.

“Exterminators too.”

Ulia Gol had reached him. She walked right up close and personal, right to his face, and inhaled deeply. She could smell the Hill on him, I knew, and those tantalizing hints of Folk in his blood, and the long-lost echoes of the mortal he may once have been. The red glint in her eye deepened drunkenly. His scent was almost too much for her. Over there in his corner of the hall, Hans watched the whole scene, green to the gills with jealousy. It clashed with his second-best suit.

Ulia Gol’s expression slid from one of euphoria to that of distaste as she remembered me. Crouched in Nicolas’s open hand, I hunkered as small as I could make myself. I was not a very big rat. And she did have a gavel, you see, for all she was letting it swing from the tips of her fingers.

In a velveted boom that carried her words to the far end of the hall, she asked, “What is your price, my precious piper?”

“I take my pay in coin, Madame Mayor.”

I swear they heard his whisper all across Amandale that night. Nicolas had a whisper like a kiss, a whisper that could reach out and ring the bells of Brotquen Cathedral so sweetly.

“One thousand gold canaries upon completion of the job. If you choose, you may pay me in silver nightingales, though I fear the tripled weight would prove unwieldy. For this reason I cannot accept smaller coin. No bronze wrens or copper robins; such currency is too much for me to shoulder easily.”

Silence. As if his whisper had sucked the breath right from the room. The chandler’s baby hiccupped.

“Paid on completion, you say.” Ulia Gol pondered, stepping back from him. “And by what measurement, pray, do we assess completion? When the last rat drowns in the Drukkamag River?”

Nicolas bowed once more, more gracefully than ever before. “Whatever terms you set, Madame Mayor, I will abide by them.”

Ulia Gol grinned. Oh, she had a handsome, roguish grin. I think I peed a little in Nicolas’s palm. “It cost our town less to build Brotquen Cathedral—and that was three hundred years of inflation ago. Why don’t you take that instead, my sweet-lipped swindler?”

“Alas, ma’am!” Nicolas shook his red-and-black head in sorrow. “While I am certain that yours is a fine cathedral, I make my living on my feet. I take for payment only what I can trundle away with me. As I stated, it must be gold or silver. Perhaps in a small leather chest or sack that I might lift upon my shoulder?”

He tapped the Mayor’s shoulder with his silver pipe, drawing a lazy sigil there. Curse or caress, who could say? Ulia Gol shivered, euphoria once again briefly blanking out her cunning.

“One thousand bright canaries,” she laughed at him, “singing in a single chest! Should not they be in a cage instead, my mercenary minstrel?”

Nicolas twinkled a wink her way. “Nay,” said he, husking low his voice for her ears (and mine) alone. His next sentence fair glittered with the full formality of the Faerie court. Had I any choice when hearing it, I’d’ve bolted right then and there and never come out from my hole till my whiskers turned gray.

“But perhaps,” he continued, “thou shouldst be, thou pink-plumed eyas. A cage equipped with manacles of silver and gilded bullwhips and all manner of bejeweled barbs and abuses for such a wicked lady-hawk as thee.”

Pleased with the impudent promise in his eyes, and pink as her candy-colored wig, Ulia Gol spun around. The tassel on her black satin cap hopped like a cottontail in a clover patch. She addressed the hall.

“The Pied Piper has come to drive our rats away. He is charging,” she threw the room a grin as extravagant as confetti, “an unconscionable fee to do so. But, my friends, our coffers will manage. What cost peace? What cost health? What cost the lives of our children? Yes, we shall have to tighten our belts this winter. What of that?” Her voice crescendoed. Her arms spread wide. “Citizens, if we do not accept his assistance now, who knows if we will even live to see the winter?”

A wall of muttering rose up against the tide of her questions. Some dissent. Some uneasy agreement. Ulia Gol took another reluctant step away from Nicolas and waded into the crowd. She worked it, touching hands, stroking baby curls, enhancing her influence as she gazed deeply into deeply worried eyes and murmured spells and assurances. Shortly, and without any overt effort, she appeared behind the podium like she’d grown there.

“Friends,” she addressed them throbbingly, “already the rats are nibbling at our stores, our infants, the foundations of our houses. Recall how rats carry plague. Do you want Amandale to face the danger that leveled Doornwold fifteen years ago? We shall put it to the vote! I ask you to consider this—extreme, yes, but remember, we only need pay if it’s effective!—solution. All in favor of the Pied Piper, say aye!”

The roar the crowd returned was deafening. The overtones were especially harsh, that particular brassy hysteria of a mob miles past the point of reasoning with. I wished I had my earplugs back. Ulia Gol did not bother to invite debate from naysayers. Their protestations were drowned out, anyway. But I could see Hans over there making note of those who shook their heads or frowned. My guess was that they’d be receiving visitors later. Probably in the dead of night.

From her place on the stage, Ulia Gol beamed upon her townspeople. But like magnet to metal, her gaze clicked back to Nicolas. She studied him with flagrant lust, and he returned her scrutiny with the scorching intensity the raven has for the hawk. He stood so still that even I, whom he held in his hand, could not feel him breathing.

“Master Piper!”

“Madame Mayor?”

“When will you begin?”

“Tomorrow at dawn.” This time, Nicolas directed his diffident smile to the room at large. “I need my sleep tonight. It is quite a long song, the one that calls the rats to the waterside and makes the thought of drowning there seem so beautiful.”

“Rest is all well and good, Master Piper. But first you must dine with me.”

“Your pardon, Madame Mayor, but I must fast before such work as I will do tomorrow.”

Her fists clenched on the edges of the podium. She leaned in. “Then a drink, perhaps. The mayoral mansion is well stocked.”

Nicolas bowed. “Ma’am, I must abstain.”

I wouldn’t say that the look Ulia Gol gave him was a pout, exactly. More like, if Nicolas’s face had been within range of her teeth, she’d have torn it off. He had toyed with her, keyed her to the pitch of his choosing, and now he would not play her like a pipe—nor let her play his. Pipe, I mean. Ahem.

His short bow and quick exit thwarted any scheme she might have improvised to keep him there. Outside in the cooling darkness, cradling me close to his chest, Nicolas turned sharply into the nearest alleyway. Stumbling on a pile of refuse, he set me down atop it, and promptly projectile-vomited all over the wall.

I’d never seen that much chunk come out of an undrunk person. Fleshing myself back to man-shape, I clasped my hands behind me and watched him. I had to curb my urge to applaud.

“Wow, Nicolas! Is that nerves, or did you eat a bad sausage for dinner?” I whistled. “I thought you couldn’t talk to women, you Foxface, you! But you were downright debonair. If the Mayor’d been a rat girl, her ears would’ve been vibrating like a tuning fork!”

Wiping his mouth on his hand, Nicolas croaked, “She is not a woman. She is a monster. I spoke to her as I speak to other monsters I have known. It is poison to speak so, Maurice—but death to do aught else. But, oh, it hurts, Maurice. It hurts to breathe the same air she breathes. It hurts to watch her courtiers—”

“Constituents,” I corrected, wondering whose face he’d seen imposed upon Ulia Gol’s. If I were a betting rat, I’d say the answer rhymed with “Airy Fleen.”

“So corrupted . . . Necrotic! As rotten as that poor rat-bitten babe shall be in a few days. They—these thinking people, people like you or me”—I decided not to challenge this—“they all agreed to the genocide. They agreed to make the orchestra of murdered swans, to abuse the god in the juniper tree. They traded their souls to a monster, and for what? Free music? Worse, worse—they set their children to serve her. Their babies, Maurice! Gone bad like the rest of them. Maurice, had I the tinder, I would burn Amandale to the ground!”

Nicolas was sobbing again. I sighed. Poor man. Or whatever he was.

I set my hand upon his tousled head. His hair was slick with sweat. “Aw, Nicolas. Aw, now. Don’t worry. We’ll get ’em. There’s worse ways to punish people than setting fire to their houses. Hellfowl, we did it one way today, and by nightfall tomorrow, we’ll have done another! So smile! Everything’s going steamingly!”

Twin ponds of tears brimmed, spilled, blinked up at me.

“Don’t you mean swimmingly?” Nicolas gasped, sighing down his sobs.

“I will soon, you don’t quit your bawling. Hey, Nico, come on!” I clucked my tongue. “Dry up, will ya? You’re not supposed to drown me till dawn!”

I could always make Nicolas laugh.

• • • •

In a career so checkered that two old men could’ve played board games on it, I’ve come near death four times. Count ’em, four. Now if we’re talking about coming within a cat-calling or even a spitting distance from death, I’d say the number’s more like “gazillions of times,” but I don’t number ’em as “near”-death experiences till I’m counting the coronal sutures on the Reaper of Rodents’s long-toothed skull.

The first time I almost died, it was my fault. It all had to do with being thirteen and drunk on despair and voluntarily wandering into a rat-baiting arena because life isn’t worth living if a Swan Princess won’t be your girlfriend. Embarrassing.

The second time was due to a frisky rat lass named Molly. She, uh, used a little too much teeth in the, you know, act. Bled a lot. Worth it, though.

Third? Peanut butter.

Fourth—one of the elder Cobblersawl boys and his brand-new birthday knife.

But I have never been so near death as that day Nicolas drowned me in the Drukkamag River.

He’d begged me not to hear him. That morning, just before dawn, he’d said, “Maurice, Maurice. Will you not stop up your ears and go to the Maze Wood and wait this day out?”

“No, Nicolas,” said I, affronted. “What, and give a bunch of poor fixed rats the glory of dying for Dora Rose? This is my end. My story. I’ve waited my whole life for a chance like this. My Folk will write a drama of this day, and the title of that play shall be Maurice the Incomparable!”

Nicolas ducked the grand sweep of my hand. “You cannot really mean to drown, Maurice. You’ll never know how the end of your drama plays out. What if we need you again, and you are dead and useless? What if . . . what if she needs you?”

I clapped his back. “She never did before, Nicolas my friend. That’s why I love the girl. Oh, and after I die today, do something for me, would you? You tell Dora Rose that she really missed out on the whole cross-species experimentation thing. You just tell her that. I want her to regret me the rest of her life. I want the last verse of her swan song to be my name. Maurice the Incomparable!”

Nicolas ducked again, looking dubious and promising nothing. But I knew he would try. That’s what friends did, and he was the best.

You may wonder—if you’re not Folk, that is—how I could so cavalierly condemn thousands of my lesser cousins, not to mention my own august person, of whom I have a high (you might even say “the highest”) regard—to a watery grave. Who died and made me arbiter of a whole pestilential population’s fate? How could I stand there, stroking my whiskers, and volunteer all those lives (and mine) to meet our soggy end at the Pied Piper’s playing?

I could sum it up in one word.

Drama.

I speak for all rats when I speak for myself. We’re alike in this. We’ll do just about anything for drama. Or comedy, I guess; we’re not particular. We’re not above chewing the scenery for posterity. We must make our territorial mark (as it were) on the arts. The Swan Folk have their ballet. We rats, we have theatre. We pride ourselves on our productions. All the cities, high and low, that span this wide, wide world are our stage.

“No point putting it off,” I told Nicolas, preparing to fur down. “Who’s to say that if you don’t drown me today, a huge storm won’t come along and cause floods enough to drown me tomorrow? If that happens, I’ll have died for nothing! Can any death be more boring?”

Nicolas frowned. “The weather augur under the Hill can predict the skies up to a month in exchange for one sip of your tears. She might be able to tell you if there will be rain . . .”

I cut him off. “What I’m saying is, you have to seize your death by the tail. Know it. Name it. My death,” I said, “is you.”

His laugh ghosted far above me as I disappeared into my other self.

“Hurricane Nicolas,” he said. “The storm with no center.”

• • • •

Comes a song too high and sweet for dull human ears. Comes a song like the sound of a young kit tickled all to giggles. Like the sharp, lustful chirps of a doe in heat. Comes a song for rats to hear, and rats alone. A song that turns the wind to silver, a wind that brings along the tantalizing smell of cream.

Excuse me, make that “lots of cream.”

A river of cream. A river that is so rich and thick and pure you could swim in it. You bet your little rat babies there’s cream aplenty. Cream for you. Cream for your cousins, for your aunts and uncles, too. There’s even cream for that ex-best buddy of yours who stole your first girlfriend along with the hunk of stinky cheese you’d saved up for your birthday.

Comes a song that sings of a river of cream. Cream enough for all.

Once I get there, ooh, baby, you betcha . . . I’m gonna find that saucy little doe who’s chirping so shamelessly. I’m gonna find her, and then I’m gonna frisk the ever-living frolic out of her, nipping and mounting and slipping and licking the cream from her fur. Oh, yeah. Let’s all go down to that river.

Now. Let’s go now. I wanna swim.

• • • •

Funny thing, drowning.

By the time I realized I didn’t want it anymore, there was nothing I could do. I was well past the flailing stage, just tumbling along head over tail, somewhere in the sea-hungry currents of the Drukkamag. The only compass I could go by indicated one direction.

Deathward.

Rats are known swimmers. We can tread water for days, hold our breath for a quarter of an hour, dive deeply, survive in open sea. Why? Because our instinct for survival is unparalleled in the animal kingdom, that’s why.

Once Nicolas’s song started, I’d no desire to survive anymore. Until I did. I never said rats were consistent. We’re entitled to an irregularity of opinion, just like mortals. Even waterlogged and tossed against Death’s very cheese grater, we’re allowed to change our minds.

And so, I did the only thing I had mind enough left to do. I fleshed back to man-shape.

The vigor of the transformation brought me, briefly, to the surface. I mouthed a lungful of air before the current sucked me back down into the river.

This is it, I thought. Damn it, damn it, da—

And then I slammed into a barrier both porous and implacable. Water rushed through it, yet I did not. I clung to it, finger and claw, and almost wept (which would have been entirely redundant at that point) when a great hook plunged at me from out of the blue, snagged me under the armpit, and hauled.

Air. Dazzle. Dry land.

I was deposited onto the stony slime of a riverbank. Someone hastily threw a blanket over my collapse. It smelled of sick dog and woodsmoke, but it was warm and dry. I think I heard my name, but I couldn’t answer, sprawled and gasping, moving from blackout to dazzle and back again while voices filtered through my waterlogged ears.

Children’s voices. Excited. Grim.

I considered opening my eyes. Got as far as blurred slittedness before my head started pounding.

We were under some sort of bridge. Nearby, nestled among boulders, a large fire burned. Over this there hung an enormous cauldron, redolent of boiling potatoes. A girl with a white rag tied over her eyes stirred it constantly. Miss Possum, or I missed my guess.

A bowl of her potato mash steamed near my elbow. I almost rolled over and dove face-first into it, but common sense kicked in. Didn’t much fancy drowning on dry land so soon after my Drukkamag experience, so I lapped at the mash with more care, watching everything. Not far from Possum squatted Master Froggit, carefully separating a pile of dead rats from living as quickly as they came to him from the figure on the bridge. The dead he set aside on an enormous canvas. The living he consigned to blind Possum’s care. She dried them and tried to feed them. There weren’t many.

My slowly returning faculty for observation told me that our bold young recruits had strung a net across a narrowish neck of the Drukkamag, beneath one of the oldest footbridges of Amandale. They weighted the net with rocks. When the rats began to fetch up against it, Greenpea, seated on the edge of the bridge, leg stumps jutting out before her, fished them out again. She wielded the long pole that had hooked me out of the current.

For the first time since, oh, since I was about thirteen, I think, I started sobbing. Too much hanging out with Nicolas, I guess. Not eating properly. Overextending myself. That sort of thing. Prolonged close contact with Dora Rose had always had this effect on me.

I applied myself to my potatoes.

Once sated, making a toga of my dog blanket, I limped up to the bridge and gazed at the girl with the hooked pole.

“Mistress Greenpea.”

“Hey.” She glanced sidelong at me as I sat next to her. “Maurice the Incomparable, right?”

“Right-o.” I warmed with pleasure. “Hand that thing over, will ya? My arms feel like noodles, but I reckon they can put in a shift for the glory of my species.”

She grunted and handed her pole to me. “I don’t see any more live ones. Not since you.”

“Well, cheer up!” I adjured her. “We’ll rise again. We’re the hardiest thing since cockroaches, you know. Besides you humans, I mean. Roaches. Blech! An acquired taste, but they’ll do for lean times. We used to dare each other to bite ’em in half when we were kits.”

Greenpea, good girl, gagged only a bit, and didn’t spew. I flopped a couple of corpses over to Froggit’s canvas. “So. This whole net thing your idea, Miss Greenpea?”

She replied in a flat, unimpressed recitation, “Dora Rose said you’d try to drown yourself with the other rats. Said it would be just like you, and that we must save you if we could, because no way was she letting you stain her memory with your martyrdom.”

I chuckled. “Said that, did she?”

“Something like that.” Greenpea shrugged. Or maybe she was just rolling her stiff shoulders. “Before we . . . we hung her on that tree, I promised we’d do what we could for you. She seemed more comfortable, after.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “And then, when I saw all the other rats in the river, I tried to save them, too. Why should you be so special? But then . . . So long as the Pied Piper played, even though he’s still all the way back in Amandale, the rats I rescued wouldn’t stay rescued. No sooner did we fish them out of the Drukkamag but they jumped back in again.”

“Listen, kid.” I returned her hard glare with a hard-eyed look of my own. “That was always the plan. You agreed to it. We all did.”

The net bulged beneath us. Greenpea didn’t back down, but the bridge of her nose scrunched beneath her spectacles. Behind thick lenses, those big gray eyes of hers widened in an effort not to cry. How old was she, anyway? Eleven? Twelve? One of the older girls in Ulia Gol’s child army. Near Ocelot’s age, I thought. Old enough at any rate to dry her tears by fury’s fire. Which she did.

“It’s horrible,” Greenpea growled. “I hate that they had to die.”

“Horrible, yeah,” I agreed. “So’s your legs. And Possum’s eyes. And Froggit’s tongue. And twenty dead swans. We’re dealing with ogres here, not unicorns. Not the nicest monsters ever, ogres. Although, when you come right down to it, unicorns are nasty brutes. Total perverts. But anyway, don’t fret, Miss Greenpea. We’re gonna triumph, have no doubt. And even if we don’t”—I started laughing, and it felt good, good, good to be alive—“even if we don’t, it’ll make a great tragedy, won’t it? I love a play where all the characters die at the end.”

• • • •

The Pied Piper stood on the steps of Brotquen Cathedral, facing the Mayor of Amandale, who paraded herself a few steps above him. Hans and his handpicked horde of henchman waited nearby at the ready. Displayed at their feet was Froggit’s macabre canvas of corpses. Most of the rats we’d simply let tumble free toward the sea when we cut the net, but we kept a few hundred back for a fly-flecked show-and-tell.

Nicolas’s face was gray and drawn. His shoulders drooped. New lines had appeared on his forehead apparently overnight, and his mouth bowed like a willow branch. The pipe he no longer played glowed against his ragged chest like a solid piece of moonlight.

“As you see,” he announced, “the rats of Amandale are drowned.”

“Mmn,” said Ulia Gol.

Most of the town—myself and my three comrades included—had gathered below the cathedral on Kirkja Street to gawk at the inconceivability of a thousand bright canaries stacked in a small leather chest right there in the open. The coins cast a golden glitter in that last lingering caress of sunset, and reflected onto the reverent faces of Amandale’s children, who wore flowers in their hair and garlands ’round their necks. All of Amandale had been feasting and carousing since the rats began their death march at dawn that morning. Many of the older citizens now bore the flushed, aggressive sneers of the pot-valiant. In the yellow light of all that dying sun and leaping gold, they, too, looked new-minted, harder and glintier than they’d been before.

Nicolas did not notice them. His gaze never left Ulia Gol’s shrewd face. She blocked his path to the gold. Hand over heart, he tried again.

“From the oldest albino to the nakedest newborn, Madame Mayor, the rats are drowned one and all. I have come for my payment.”

But she did not move. “Your payment,” she purred, “for what?”

Nicolas inhaled deeply. “I played my pipe, and I made them dance, and they danced themselves to drowning.”

“Master Piper . . .” Ulia Gol oozed closer to him. I could see Nicolas stiffen in an effort not to back away.

I must say, the Mayor of Amandale had really gussied herself up for this occasion. Her pink wig was caught up in a sort of birdcage, all sorts of bells and beads hanging off it. The bone-paneled brocade of her crimson dress was stiff enough to stand up by itself, and I imagined it’d require three professional grave robbers with shovels to exhume her from her maquillage. She smelled overpoweringly of rotten pears and sour grapes. Did I say so before? At the risk of repeating myself, then: a magnificent woman, Ulia Gol.

“I watched you all day, Master Piper,” she told Nicolas. “I strained my ears and listened closely. You put your pipe to your lips, all right, my pretty perjurer, and fabricated a haggard verisimilitude, but never a note did I hear you play.”

“No,” Nicolas agreed. “You would not have. I did not play for you, Ulia Gol.”

“Prove it.”

He pointed at the soggy canvas. “There is my proof.”

Ulia Gol shrugged. Her stiff lace collar barely moved. “I see dead rats, certainly. But they might have come from anywhere, drowned in any number of ways. The Drukkamag River runs clean and clear, and Amandale is much as it ever was. Yes, there were rats. Now there are none.” She opened her palms. “Who knows why? Perhaps they left us of their own accord.”

Most of the crowd rustled in agreement. Sure, you could tell a few wanted to mutter in protest, but pressed tight their lips instead. Fresh black bruises adorned the faces of many of these. What were the odds that Ulia Gol’s main detractors had been made an example of since last night’s town meeting in Orchestra Hall? Not long, I’d say. Not long at all.

Ulia Gol swelled with the approval of her smitten constituents. Their adoration engorged her. Magic coursed through her. There was no mistaking what she was if you knew to look out for it. She stank like an ogre and grinned like a giant, and all that was missing was a beanstalk and a bone grinder and a basket for her bread. She loomed ever larger, swamping Nicolas in her shadow.

“Master Piper—if a Master indeed you are—you cannot prove that your alleged playing had aught to do with the rats’ disappearance. Perhaps they decamped due to instinct. Migration. After all, their onset was as sudden as their egress. Perhaps you knew this. Did you really come to Amandale to aid us, or were you merely here by happenstance? Seeing our dismay and our disarray, did you seek to take advantage of us, to ply your false trade, and cheat honest citizens of their hard-earned coin?”

The Mayor of Amandale was closer to the truth than she realized—ha! But that didn’t worry me. Ulia Gol, after all, wasn’t interested in truth. The only thing currently absorbing her was her intent to cheat the man who’d refused her bed the night before. It never occurred to her that the plague of rats was a misdirection of Amandale’s attention during the theft of the bone orchestra. Okay, and part of its punishment for the murdered swans.

“Look at the color of his face,” Greenpea whispered. “Is the piper all right?”

“Well . . . er.” I squirmed. “It’s Nicolas, right? He’s never all the way all right.”

But seeing his sick pallor, I wasn’t sure Nicolas remembered that all this was part of a bigger plan. He looked near to swooning. Not good. We needed him for this next bit.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please . . . just pay me and I’ll be on my way.”

“I am sorry, Master Piper.” Ulia Gol laughed at him, her loud and lovely laugh. “But I cannot pay you all this gold for an enterprise you cannot prove you didn’t engineer. In fact, you should consider yourself lucky if you leave Amandale in one piece.”

The crowd around us tittered and growled. The children drew closer together, far less easy with the atmosphere of ballooning tension than were their parents. It was the adults whose eyes narrowed, whose flushed faces had empurpled and perspired until they looked all but smaller models of their Mayor. Nicolas took a step nearer Ulia Gol, though what it cost him, I do not know. He was a smallish man, and had to look up to her. Nicolas only sometimes seemed tall because of his slender build.

“Please,” he begged her again. “Do not break your word. Have I not done as I promised?”

I leaned in for a closer look, brushing off Possum’s anxious hand when it plucked my elbow.

“What’s he doing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, kid.”

How Nicolas planned to act if Ulia Gol suddenly discovered within her scrumdiddlyumptious breast a thimble’s worth of honor, compassion, or just plain sense, I do not know.

But she wouldn’t. She was what she was, and behaved accordingly.

If she could but smell the furious sorrow on him, as I could . . . scent that destroying wind, the storm that had no center, the magic in his pipe that would dance us all to the grave, then perhaps even Ulia Gol might have flung herself to her knees and solicited his forgiveness. Did she think his music only worked on rats? That, because he trembled at her triumph and turned, in that uncertain twilight, an exquisite shade of green, he would not play a song Amandale would remember for a hundred years?

“Please,” the Pied Piper repeated.

Something in Ulia Gol’s face flickered.

I wondered if, after all, the Mayor would choose to part with her gold, and Nicolas to spare her. Never mind that it would leave Dora Rose pinioned to a juniper tree, the swans only partly avenged, and all my stylish stratagems and near-drowning in vain. Oh, he—naw, he . . . Surely Nicolas—even he!—wouldn’t be so, so criminally virtuous! Voice breaking and black eyes brimming, he appealed to her for a third and final time.

“Please.”

The flickering stilled. I almost laughed in relief.

“It’s gonna be fine,” I told my comrades. “Watch closely. Be ready.”

“Henceforth,” purred the Mayor, “I banish you, Master Piper, from the town of Amandale. If ever you set foot inside my walls again, I will personally hang you from the bell tower of Brotquen Cathedral. There you will rot, until nothing but your bones and that silver pipe you play are left.”

Ow. Harsh. Fabulous.

Nicolas nodded heavily, as if a final anvil had descended upon his brow.

Then.

To my great delight, to my pinkest tickly pleasure, his posture subtly shifted. Yes, altered and unbent, the sadness swept from him like a magician’s tablecloth right from beneath the cutlery. Nicolas was totally bare now, with only the glitter of glass and knives left to him.

He sprang upright. And grinned. At the sharp gleam of that grin, even I shivered.

“Here we go,” I breathed.

Beside me, Greenpea leaned forward in her wheelchair, gray eyes blazing. “Yes, yes, yes!” she whispered. “Get this over with, piper. Finish it.”

Solemnly, Froggit took Possum’s hand in his and squeezed. She lifted her chin, face pale behind her ragged blindfold, and asked, “Is it now, Mister Maurice?”

“Soon. Very soon,” I replied, hardly able to keep from dancing. Lo, I’d had enough dancing for a lifetime, thanks. Still, I couldn’t help but wriggle a bit.

“Citizens of Amandale,” announced the Pied Piper, “although it causes me pangs of illimitable dolor to leave you thus, I must, as a law-abiding alien to your environs, make my exit gracefully. But to thank you for your hospitality and to delight your beautiful children, I propose to play you one last song.”

“Time to put that cotton in your ears,” I warned my recruits. Froggit and Possum obeyed. I don’t think Greenpea even heard me; she was that focused on the motley figure poised on the steps of Brotquen Cathedral.

My caution turned out to be unnecessary. Nicolas was, indeed, a Master Piper. He could play tunes within tunes. Tunes piled on tunes, and tunes buried under them. His music came from the Hill, from Her, the Faerie Queen, and there was no song Nicolas could not play when he flung himself open to the sound.

First he played a strand of notes that froze the adults where they stood. Second, a lower, darker line, strong enough to paralyze the ogre in her place. Then he played three distinct trills that sounded like names—Froggit, Possum, Greenpea—exempting them from his final spell. Greenpea licked her lips and looked almost disappointed.

Last came the spell song. The one we’d worked so hard for these three days. A song to lure twenty little Swan Hunters into the trap a Swan Princess had set. A song to bring the children back to Dora Rose.

I don’t think, in my furry shape, I’d’ve given the tune more than passing heed. But I was full-fleshed right now, with all the parts of a man. The man I was had been a child once, sometimes still behaved like one, and the tune Nicolas played was tailor-made for children. It made the tips of my toes tingle and my heels feel spry. Well within control, thank the Captured God.

You know who couldn’t control it though?

Ocelot, the Gravedigger’s daughter. Ilse Cobblersawl, her brothers Frank, Theodore, and James, her sweet sister Anabel, and the nine-year-old twins Hilde and Gretel. Pearl, the chandler’s eldest daughter, who let her sister Ruby slip from her arms, to join hands with Maven Chain, the goldsmith’s girl. Charles the Chimneysweep. Kevin the Gooseboy. Those twelve and eight more whose names I did not know.

Heads haloed in circles of silver fire that cast a ghostly glow about them, these twenty children shoved parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, teachers, employers, out of the way. Those too small to keep pace were swept up and carried by their fellow hunters. Still playing, Nicolas sprinted down the steps of the cathedral and sprang right into that froth of silver-lit children.

All of them danced. Then the tune changed, and they ran instead.

Light-footed, as though they wore wings on their feet, they fled down Kirkja Street and onto Maskmakers Boulevard. This, I knew, ended in a cul-de-sac abutting a town park, which sported in its farthest shrubbery a rusted gate leading into the Maze Wood.

“Step lively, soldiers,” I barked to my three recruits. “Don’t wanna get caught staring when the thrall fades from this mob. Gonna get ugly. Lots of snot and tears and torches. Regardless, we should hie ourselves on over to the Heart Glade. Wouldn’t want to miss the climax now, would we?”

Froggit shook his head and Possum looked doubtful, but Greenpea was already muscling her chair toward the corner of Kirkja and Maskmakers. We made haste to follow.

Dora Rose, here we come.

• • • •

I’d seen Dora Rose as a swan, and I’d seen her as a woman, but I’d never seen her both at once. Or so nakedly.

I confess, I averted my eyes. No, I know, I know. You think I should’ve taken my chance. Looked my fill. Saved up the sweet sight of her to savor all those lonely nights in my not-so-distant future. (Because, let’s be honest here, my love life’s gonna be next to nonexistent from this point on. Most of the nice fixed does I know are bloating gently in the Drukkamag, and any Folk doe who scampered off to save herself from the Pied Piper is not going to be speaking to me. Who could blame her, really?) But, see, it wasn’t like that. It was never like that, with Dora Rose.

Sure, I curse by the Captured God. But Dora Rose is my religion.

It was as much as I could bear just to glance once and see her arms outstretched, elongated, mutated, jointed into demented angles that human bones are not intended for, pure white primary feathers bursting from her fingernails, tertials and secondaries fanning out from the soft torn flesh of her underarms. Her long neck was a column of white, like a feathered python, and her face, though mostly human, had become masklike, eyes and nose and mouth black as bitumen, hardening into the shining point of a beak.

That’s all I saw, I swear.

After that I was kneeling on the ground and hiding my face, like Nicolas under his covers. In that darkness, I became aware of the music in the Heart Glade. Gave me a reason to look up again.

What does a full bone orchestra look like? First the woodwinds: piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon. Then the brass: horn, trumpet, cornet, tenor trombone, bass trombone, tuba (that last must’ve been Dasher—he was the biggest cob on the lake). Percussion: timpani, snare, cymbals (those cygnets, I’d bet). And the strings. Violin. Viola. Violoncello. Double bass. And the harp. One white harp, with shining black strings.

Elinore, Dora Rose’s twin sister.

All of them, set in a circle around the juniper tree, glowed in the moonlight. They played softly by themselves, undisturbed, as if singing lullabies to the tree and she who hung upon it.

I’d heard the tune before. It was the same phrase of music the tiny firebird had sung, which later the tree itself repeated in its seismic voice. Beneath the full sweep of the strings and hollow drumbeats and bells of bone, I seemed to hear that tremulous boy soprano sobbing out his verse with the dreary repetition of the dead.

Only then—okay, so maybe I took another quick glance—did I see the red tracks that stained the pale down around Dora Rose’s eyes. By this I knew she had been weeping all this while.

She, who never wept. Not once. Not in front of me.

I’d thought swans didn’t cry. Not like rats and broken pipers and little children. Not like the rest of us. Stupid to be jealous of a bunch of bones. That they merited her red, red tears, when nothing else in the world could or would. Least of all, yours truly, Maurice the Incomparable.

Me and my three comrades loitered in the darkness outside that grisly bone circle. Greenpea, confined to her wheelchair; Possum, sitting quietly near her feet; a tired Froggit sprawled beside her, his head in her lap. Possibly he’d fallen into a restive sleep. They’d had a tough few days, those kids.

We’d come to the Heart Glade by a shortcut I knew, but it wasn’t long till we heard a disturbance in one of the maze’s many corridors. In the distance, Nicolas’s piping caught the melody of the bone orchestra and countered it, climbing an octave higher and embroidering the somber fabric of the melody with sharp silver notes. The twenty children he’d enchanted joined in, singing:

Day and night Stepsister weeps
Her grief like blood runs red, runs deep
Kywitt! Kywitt! Kywitt! I cry
What a beautiful bird am I!

In a rowdiness of music making, they spilled into the Heart Glade. Ocelot was yipping, “Kywitt! Kywitt! Kywitt!” at the tops of her lungs, while Ilse and Maven flapped their arms like wings and made honking noises. A flurry of chirps and whistles and shrieks of laughter from the other children followed in cacophony. Nicolas danced into the glade after them, his pipe wreathed in silver flames. Hopping nimbly over a small bone cymbal in the moss, he faced the Heart Glade, faced the children, and his tune changed again.

And the children leapt the bones.

Once inside the circle, the twenty of them linked wrists and danced rings around the juniper tree, as they used to do in the beginning, when the first of the Swan Folk were hunted and changed. As they whirled, a fissure opened in the juniper’s trunk. Red-gold fire flickered within. Like a welcoming hearth. Like a threshold to a chamber of magma.

The children, spurred by Nicolas’s piping, began to jump in.

They couldn’t reach the fissure fast enough. Ocelot, by dint of shoving the littler ones out of her way, was first to disappear into the bloody light. And when she screamed, the harp that had been Elinore burst into silver-and-red flame, and disappeared. The first silver bloom erupted from the branches of the juniper tree.

Dora Rose shuddered where she hung.

A second child leapt through the crack. Ilse Cobblersawl. The bone trumpet vanished. A second silver bloom appeared. Then little Pearl the Chandler’s daughter shouldered her way into the tree. Her agonized wail cut off as a bone cymbal popped into nothingness. Another silver bud flowered open.

When all twenty instruments had vanished, when all twenty Swan Hunters had poured themselves into the tree, when the trunk of the tree knit its own bark back over the gaping wound of its molten heart, then twenty silver blooms opened widely on their branches. The blooms gave birth to small white bees that busied themselves in swirling pollinations. Petals fell, leaving silver fruit where the flowers had been. The branches bent to the ground under the colossal weight of that fruit and heaved Dora Rose from their tree. Into the moss she tumbled, like so much kindling, a heap of ragged feathers, shattered flesh, pale hair.

Nicolas stopped piping. He wiped his mouth as if it had gone numb. He looked over at Froggit, who’d been screaming wordlessly ever since waking to the sight of his siblings feeding themselves to the tree. Nicolas held Froggit in his dense black gaze, the enormity of his sadness and regret etching his face ancient.

For myself, I couldn’t care less about any of them.

I rushed to Dora Rose and shook her. Nothing happened. No response. Reaching out, I tackled Nicolas at the knees, yanking him to the ground and pinning him down.

“Is she dead, Nicolas?” I seized the lapels of his motley coat and shook. “Nicolas, did you kill her?”

“I?” he asked, staring at me in that dreadfully gentle way of his. “Perhaps. It sounds like something I might do. This world is so dangerous and cruel, and I am what it makes me. But I think you’ll find she breathes.”

He was correct, although how he could see so slight a motion as her breath by that weird fruity light, I couldn’t say. I, for one, couldn’t see a damn thing. But when I got near enough, I could smell the life of her. Not yet reduced to so much swan meat. Not to be salted and parboiled, seasoned with ginger, larded up and baked with butter yet. Not yet.

Oh, no, my girl. Though filthy and broken, you remain my Dora Rose.

“Come on, Ladybird. Come on. Wake up. Wake up now.” I jostled her. I chafed her ragged wrists. I even slapped her face. Lightly. Well, not so hard as I might’ve.

“Maybe she’s under a spell,” Possum’s scratchy voice suggested. “She told us it might happen. She’s a Princess, she says. She has to play her part.”

“Oh, yeah?” I might have known my present agony was due to Dora Rose’s inflexible adherence to tradition. Stupid swan girl. I could wring her white neck, except I loved her so. “What are we supposed to do about it, eh?”

I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the blind girl shrug. She did not move from the shadows of the Heart Glade into the juniper’s feral light. Froggit at her feet sobbed like he would never stop.

Greenpea rolled her wheelchair closer to us.

“She said that Nicolas would know what to do.”

I looked down again at Nicolas, who blinked at me. “Well?”

“Oh. That. Well.” His face went like a red rose on fire. “You know, Maurice.”

I’d had it. Time to show my teeth. “What, Nicolas?” I hissed. “Spit it out, wouldja? We’re working within a three-day time frame here, okay? If today turns into tomorrow, she’ll be gone. And what’ll all this be for? So say it. How do we wake her?”

“True love’s k-kiss,” Nicolas answered, blushing more deeply and unable to meet my gaze. “It’s pretty standard when one is dealing with, with . . . royalty.”

“Oh.” I sat back on my heels. A mean roil of jealousy and bile rose up inside me, but my next words, I’m proud to say, came out flat and even. Who said I couldn’t control my basest urges? “Okay then, Nico, hop to it. But no tongue, mind, or I’ll have it for my next meal.”

Nicolas scooted away from me, scraping up moss in his haste. “Maurice, you cannot mean it.” He ran nervous brown fingers through his hair.

“Nicolas,” said I, “I’ve never been more serious. No tongue—or you’ll be sleeping with one eye open and a sizeable club under your pillow the rest of your days.”

“No, no!” He held up his hands, blocking me and Dora Rose from his view. “That’s not what I meant at all. I only meant—I can’t.”

“You . . . what?”

“I can’t k-ki . . . Do that. What you’re saying.” Nicolas shook his head back and forth like a child confronted with a syrupy spoonful of ipecac. His hair stood on end. His skin was sweaty and ashen. “Not on your life. Or mine. Or—or hers. Never.” He paused. “Sorry.”

I sprang to my feet. Wobbled. Sat down promptly. Limbs, don’t fail me now. Grabbing him by the hem of his muddy trousers, I yanked him back toward me and pounced again, my hands much nearer his throat this time. “Nicolas, by the Captured God, if you don’t kiss her right this instant, I’ll . . .”

“He can’t, Maurice,” Greenpea said unexpectedly. She fisted my collar and pulled me off him, wheeling backward in her chair until she could deposit me, still flailing, at Dora Rose’s side. That girl had an arm on her—even after fishing drowned rats out of the Drukkamag all day. Her parents were both smiths: she, their only child. “He can’t even say the word without choking. You want someone to kiss her, you do it yourself. Leave him alone.”

Nicolas turned his head and stared up at her, glowing at this unexpected reprieve. If he could have bled light onto his rescuer, I don’t think Greenpea’d ever get the stains out.

“We’ve not been introduced, Miss . . .? You are Master Froggit’s cousin, I believe.”

“Greenpea Margissett.”

“Nicolas of the Hill.” His mouth quirked. “Nicolas of Nowhere.”

She frowned fiercely at him. She looked just like a schoolmarm I once knew, who laid a clever trail of crumbs right up to a rattrap that almost proved my undoing. She’s how I ended up in that pickle jar, come to think of it. Unnerving to see that same severe expression on so young a face.

“Nicolas,” she said, very sternly, “I am not happy about the rats.”

All that wonderful light snuffed right out of his face. Nicolas groaned. “Neither am I.” He slapped a hand hard against his chest, driving the pipe against his breastbone. “I am not happy.” Slap. “I will never be happy again.” Slap.

With that, he crumpled on the ground next to Froggit and Dora Rose and began to retch, tearing at his hair by the fistful. Me and Greenpea watched him a while. Froggit, meanwhile, crawled over to the juniper tree and hunkered down by the roots to cry more quietly. Nothing from Possum, lost behind us in the darkness.

Presently, I muttered to Greenpea, “We’ll get nothing more out of him till he’s cried out. It’s like reasoning with a waterspout.”

Greenpea studied the Pied Piper, her brow creased. “He’s cracked.”

“Got it in one.”

“But you used him anyway?”

I bared my teeth at her, the little know-it-all. Show her I could chew through anything—metal spokes, bandaged leg stumps, leather coat, bone.

“Yeah. I used you, too, don’t forget. And your friends. Oh, and about half a million rats. And all those children we murdered here tonight. I used the Mayor herself against herself and made a puppet of the puppet master. I’ll tell you something else, little Rebel Greenpea—I’d do it again and worse to wake this Swan Princess now.”

Resting her head on the back of her chair, Greenpea whispered, “It won’t.” I couldn’t tell if it was smugness or sorrow that smelled so tart and sweet on her, like wild strawberries. “Only one thing can.”

“But it’s not—” I drew a breath. “Seemly.”

Greenpea’s clear gray gaze ranged over the Heart Glade. She rubbed her eyes beneath her spectacles. “None of this is.”

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to . . .

Not her lips at least. That, Dora Rose’d never forgive, no matter what excuse I stammered out. No, I chose to kiss the sole of her foot. It was blackened like her mask, and webbed and beginning to curl under. If she later decided to squash me with that selfsame foot, I’d feel it was only my due. I’d let her squash me—happily. If only she’d wake.

Beneath my lips, the cold webbing warmed. The hard toes flexed, pinkened, fleshed back to mortal feet. I bowed my head to the ground and only dared to breathe again when I felt her stir. I glanced up to see Dora Rose wholly a woman again, Greenpea putting the Pied Piper’s motley cloak over her nakedness and helping her sit up. Nicolas scrambled to hide behind the fortress of Greenpea’s wheelchair as soon as Dora Rose was upright.

Then Dora Rose looked at me.

And I guess I’ll remember that look, that burning, haughty, tender look, until my dying day.

She removed her sole from the palm of my hand and slowly stood up, never breaking eye contact.

“You’re wrapped in a dog blanket, Maurice.”

I leaned on my left elbow and grinned. “Hellfowl, Dora Rose, you should’ve seen my outfit when they fished me outta the Drukkamag. Wasn’t wrapped in much but water, if I recall.”

She turned a shoulder to me, and bent her glance on Greenpea. It brimmed with the sort of gratitude I’d worked my tail to the bone these last three days to earn, but for whatever reason, I didn’t seem to mind Dora Rose lavishing it elsewhere. Probably still aquiver from our previous eye contact.

“You did so well, my friend.” She stooped to kiss Greenpea’s forehead. “You three were braver than princes. Braver than queens. When I hung on the juniper tree, I told the ghost inside it of your hurts—and of your help. It promised you a sure reward. But first . . . first I must hatch my brothers and sisters from their deaths.”

Dora Rose moved through the tree’s shadow in a beam of her own light. She lifted an exhausted Froggit from the ground and returned him to his cousin. He huddled in Greenpea’s lap, face buried in her shoulder. Possum crept toward them with uncertain steps, feeling for the chair. Finding it, she sat down near one of its great wheels, one hand on Froggit’s knee, the other grasping fast to Greenpea’s fingers. She was not a big girl like Greenpea. Not much older than Froggit, really.

They all patted one another’s shoulders and stroked one another’s hair, ceasing to pay attention to the rest of us. There was Nicolas, huddled on the ground not far from them in his fetal curl. At least he’d stopped crying. In his exhaustion, he watched the children. Something like hunger marked his face, something like envy creased it, but also a sort of lonely satisfaction in their fellowship. He made no move to infringe, only hugged his own elbows and rested his head on the moss. His face was a tragedy even I could not bear to watch.

Where was my favorite Swan Princess? Ah.

Dora Rose had plucked the first fruit from the juniper tree. I went over to help. Heaving a particularly large one off its branch (it came to me with a sharp crack, but careful inspection revealed nothing broken), I asked, “Now what would a big silver watermelon like this taste like, I wonder?”

“It’s not a watermelon, Maurice.” Dora Rose set another shining thing carefully on the ground. The silver fruit made a noise like a hand sweeping harp strings. “It’s an egg.”

“I like eggs.”

“Maurice, if you dare!”

“Aw, come on, Ladybird. As if I would.” She stared pointedly at my chin until I wiped the saliva away. “Hey, it’s a glandular reflex. I’ve not been eating as much as I should. Surprised I’m not in shock.”

As Dora Rose made no attempt even at pretending to acknowledge this, I went on plucking the great glowing eggs from the juniper tree. Soon we had a nice, big clutch piled pyramid-style on the moss.

Let me tell you, the only thing more tedious than a swan ballet is a swan hatching. You see one fuzzy gray head peeping out from a hole in a shell, you’ve seen ’em all. It takes hours. And then there’s the grooming and the feeding and the nuzzling and the nesting, and oh, the interminable domesticity. Swan chicks aren’t even cute like rat kits, which are the littlest wee things you did ever see and make the funniest noises besides. Swan chicks are just sort of pipsqueaking fluff balls.

But Dora Rose’s silver-shelled clutch weren’t your average eggs.

For one thing, when they burst open—which they did within minutes of being harvested—they all went at once, as if lightning smote them. Up from the shards they flew, twenty swans in total, of varying aspects and sexes.

But all a bit, well, weird.

When they finally came back down to the ground, in a landing that wanted nothing in grace or symmetry, I noticed what was off about them. They had no smell. Or if they did, it wasn’t a smell that matched my notion of “swan” or even of “bird.” Not of any variety. Second, as the disjointed moonlight shone through the tree branches to bounce off their feathers, I saw that though the creatures were the right shape for swans, that flew like swans and waddled like swans, there was something innately frightening about them. Impenetrable. As if a god had breathed life into stone statues, and that was what they were: stone. Not creatures of flesh and feather at all.

It hit me then. These swans were not, in fact, of flesh and feather. Or even of stone. They were covered in hard white scales. Their coats weren’t down at all, but interlocking bone.

Even as I thought this, they fleshed to human shape. Ivory they were, these newborn Swan Folk. Skin, hair, and eyes of that weirdly near-white hue, their pallor broken only by bitterly black mouths: lips and teeth and tongues all black together. Each wore a short gown of bone scales that clattered when they walked. Their all-ivory gazes fastened, unblinkingly, on Dora Rose.

She reached out to one of them, crying, “Elinore!”

But the swan girl who stepped curiously forward at the sound of her voice made Dora Rose gasp. True, she was like Elinore—but she was also like Ocelot, the gravedigger’s daughter. She wore a silver circlet on her brow. Dora Rose averted her face and loosed a shuddering breath. But she did not weep. When she looked at the girl again, her face was calm, kindly, cold.

“Do you have a name?”

Elinore-Ocelot just stared. Tentatively, she moved closer to Dora Rose. Just as tentatively, knelt before her. Setting her head against Dora Rose’s thigh, she butted lightly. Dora Rose put a hand upon the girl’s ivory hair. Nineteen other swanlings rushed to their knees and pressed in, hoping for a touch of her hand.

I couldn’t help myself. I collapsed, laughing.

“Maurice!” Dora Rose snapped. “Stop cackling at once!”

“Oh!” I howled. “And you a new mama twenty times over! Betcha the juniper tree didn’t whisper that about your fate in all the time you hung. You’d’ve lit outta the Heart Glade so fast . . . Oh, my heart! Oh, Dora Rose! Queen Mother and all . . .”

Dora Rose’s eyes burned to do horrible things to me. How I wished she would! At the moment though, a bunch of mutely ardent cygnets besieged her on all sides, and she had no time for me. Captured God knew they’d start demanding food soon, like all babies. Wiping my eyes, I advised Dora Rose to take her bevy of bony swanlets back to Lake Serenus and teach them to bob for stonewort before they mistook strands of her hair for widgeon grass.

Tee hee.

Shooting one final glare my way, Dora Rose said, “You. I’ll deal with you later.”

“Promise?”

“I . . .” She hesitated. Scowled. Then reached her long silver fingers to grab my nose and tweak it. Hard. Hard enough to ring bells in my ears and make tears spurt from my eyes. The honk and tug at the end were especially malevolent. I grinned all over my face, and my heart percussed with bliss. Gesture like that was good as a pinkie swear in Rat Folk parlance—and didn’t she know it, my own dear Dora Rose!

Out of deference, I “made her a leg”—as a Swan Prince might say. But my version of that courtly obeisance was a crooked, shabby, insolent thing: the only kind of bow a rat could rightly make to a swan.

“So long then, Ladybird.”

Dora Rose hesitated, then said, “Not so long as last time—my Incomparable Maurice.”

Blushing ever so palely and frostily (I mean, it was practically an invitation, right?), she downed herself for flight. A beautiful buffeting ruckus arose from her wings as she rocketed right out of the Heart Glade. Twenty bone swans followed her, changing from human to bird more quickly than my eye could take in. White wind. Silver wings. Night sky. Moonlight fractured as they flew toward Lake Serenus.

Heaving a sigh, I looked around. Nicolas and the three children were all staring up at the tree.

“Now what? Did we forget something?”

The juniper tree’s uppermost branches trembled. Something glimmered high above, in the dense green of those needles. The trembling became a great shaking, and like meteors, three streaks of silver light fell to the moss and smoked thinly on the ground. I whistled.

“Three more melons! Can’t believe we missed those.”

“You didn’t,” Nicolas replied, in that whisper of his that could break hearts. “Those are for the children. Their reward.”

“I could use a nice, juicy reward about now.”

He smiled distractedly at me. “You must come to my house for supper, Maurice. I have a jar of plum preserves that you may eat. And a sack of sugared almonds, although they might now be stale.”

How freely does the drool run after a day like mine!

“Nicolas!” I moaned. “If you don’t have food on your person, you have to stop talking about it. It’s torture.”

“I was only trying to be hospitable, Maurice. Here you go, Master Froggit. This one’s singing your song.”

I couldn’t hear anything. Me, who has better hearing than anyone I know! But Nicolas went over, anyway, and handed the first of the silver eggs to Froggit. It was big enough that Froggit had to sit down to hold it in his lap. He shuddered and squirmed, but his swollen eyes, thank the Captured God, didn’t fill up and spill over again.

To Possum, Nicolas handed a second egg. This one was small enough to fit in her palms. She smoothed her hands over the silver shell. Lifting it to her face, she sniffed delicately.

Into Greenpea’s hands, Nicolas placed the last egg. It was curiously flat and long. She frowned down at it, perplexed and a bit fearful, but did not cast it from her.

Each of the shells shivered to splinters before Nicolas could step all the way back from Greenpea’s chair.

Possum was the first to speak. “I don’t understand,” she said, fingering her gift.

“Hey, neat!” I said, bending down for a look. “Goggles! Hey, but don’t see why you need ’em, Miss Possum. Not having, you know, eyes anymore. Can’t possibly wanna shield them from sunlight, or saltwater, or whatever. For another, even if you did, these things are opaque as a prude’s lingerie. A god couldn’t see through them.”

“That is because they are made of bone, Maurice,” Nicolas said. “Try them on, Miss Possum. You will see.”

Her lips flattened at what she took to be his inadvertent slip of the tongue. But she undid the bandage covering her eyes and guided the white goggles there. She raised her head to look at me. An unaccountable dread seized me at the expression on her face.

“Oh!” Possum gasped and snatched the goggles from her head, backhanding them off her lap like they were about to grow millipede legs and scuttle up her sleeve. “I saw—I saw—!”

Greenpea grabbed her hand. “They gave you back your eyes? But isn’t that . . .?”

“I saw him,” Possum sobbed, pointing in my direction. “I saw him tomorrow. And the next day. And the day he dies. His grave. It overlooks a big blue lake. I saw . . .”

Nicolas crouched to inspect the goggles, poking at them with a slender finger. “The juniper didn’t give you the gift of sight, Miss Possum—but of foresight. How frightening for you. But very beautiful, and very rare, too. You are to be congratulated. I think.”

A sharp, staccato sound tapped out an inquiry. Froggit was exploring his own gift: a small bone drum, with a shining white hide stretched over it. I wondered if the skin had come from one of his siblings.

Best not to muse about such things aloud, of course. Might upset the boy.

Froggit banged on the hide with a drumstick I was pretty sure was also made of bone.

What does the drum do? asked the banging. Is there a trick in it?

“Froggit!” Possum cried out, laughing a little. “You’re talking!”

A short, startled tap in response. I am?

“Huh,” I muttered. “Close enough for Folk music, anyway.”

Flushed with her own dawning excitement, Greenpea brought the bone fiddle in her lap to rest under her chin. She took a bone bow strung with long black hair and set it to the silver strings.

The fiddle wailed like a slaughtered rabbit.

She looked at her legs. They didn’t move. She tried the bow again.

Cats brawling. Tortured dogs. That time in the rat-baiting arena I almost died. I put my hands to my ears. “Nicolas! Please! Make her stop.”

“Hush, Maurice. We all sound like that when we first start to play.” Nicolas squatted before Greenpea’s chair to meet her eyes. She kept on sawing doggedly at the strings, her face set with harrowing determination, until at last the Pied Piper put his hand on hers. The diabolical noise stopped.

“Miss Greenpea. Believe me, it will take months, maybe years, of practice before you’ll be able to play that fiddle efficiently. Longer before you play it well. But perhaps we can start lessons tomorrow, when we’re all better rested and fed.”

“But,” she asked, clutching it close, “what does it do?”

“Do?” Nicolas inquired. “In this world, nothing. It’s just a fiddle.”

Greenpea’s stern lips trembled. She looked mad enough to break the fiddle over his head.

“Possum can see. Froggit can talk. I thought this would make me walk again. I thought . . .”

“No.” He touched the neck of the bone fiddle thoughtfully. “I could pipe Maurice’s broken bones together, but I cannot pipe the rats of Amandale back to life. What’s gone is gone. Your legs. Froggit’s tongue. Possum’s eyes. They are gone.”

Huge tears rolled down her face. She did not speak.

He continued, “Fiddle music, my dear Miss Greenpea, compels a body, willy-nilly, to movement. More so than the pipe, I think—and I do not say that lightly, Master Piper that I am. Your fiddle may not make you walk again. But once you learn to play, the two of you together will make the world dance.”

“Will we?” Greenpea spat bitterly. “Why should the world dance and not I?”

Bowing his head, Nicolas dropped to one knee, and set a hand on each of her armrests. When he spoke again, his voice was low. I had to strain all my best eavesdropping capabilities to listen in.

“Listen. In the Realms Under the Hill, my silver pipe is the merest pennywhistle. It has no power of compulsion or genius. I am nothing but a tin sparrow when I play for the Faerie Queen; it amuses Her to hear me chirp and peep. Yet you saw what I did with my music today, up here in the Realms Above. Now . . .”

His breath blew out in wonder. “Now,” the Pied Piper told her, “if ever you found yourself in Her court, with all the Lords and Ladies of Faerie arrayed against you, fierce in their wisdom, hideous in their beauty, and pitiless, pitiless as starlight—and you played them a tune on this bone fiddle of yours, why . . .”

Nicolas smiled. It was as feral a grin as the one he’d worn on the steps of Brotquen Cathedral, right before he enchanted the entire town of Amandale. “Why, Miss Greenpea, I reckon you could dance the Immortal Queen Herself to death, and She powerless to stop you.”

“Oh,” Greenpea sighed. She caressed the white fiddle, the silver strings. “Oh.”

“But.” Nicolas sprang up and dusted off his patched knees. “You have to learn how to play it first. I doubt a few paltry scrapes would do more than irritate Her. And then She’d break you, make no doubt. Ulia Gol at her worst is a saint standing next to Her Most Gracious Majesty.”

Taking up his cloak from the spot where Dora Rose had dropped it, Nicolas swirled it over his shoulders. He stared straight ahead, his face bleak and his eyes blank, as though we were no longer standing there.

“I am very tired now,” he said, “and very sad. I want to go home and sleep until I forget if I have lived these last three days or merely dreamed them. I have had stranger and more fell dreams than this. Or perhaps”—he shuddered—“perhaps I was awake then, and this—this is the dream I dreamed to escape my memories. In which case, there is no succor for me, not awake or asleep, and I can only hope for that ultimate oblivion, and to hasten it with whatever implements I have on hand. If you have no further need of me, I will bid you adieu.”

Alarmed at this turn, I scrambled to tug his coattails. “Hey, Nico! Hey, Nicolas, wait a minute, twinkle toes. Nicolas, you bastard, you promised me almonds!”

“Did I?” He looked up brightly, and blasted me with his smile, and it was like a storm wrack had blown from his face. “I did, Maurice! How could I have forgotten? Come along, then, with my sincerest apologies. Allow me to feed you, Maurice. How I love to feed my friends when they are hungry!”

Greenpea wheeled her chair about to block his way. “Teach me,” she demanded.

He blinked at her as if he had never seen her face before. “Your pardon?”

She held out her bone fiddle. “If what you say is true, this gift is not just about music; it’s about magic, too. And unless I’m wrong, Amandale won’t have much to do with either in years to come.”

I snorted in agreement.

“Teach me.” Greenpea pointed with bow and fiddle to her two friends. “Them too. Teach all of us. We need you.”

Please, Froggit tapped out on his bone drum. We can’t go home.

“Of course you can!” Nicolas assured him, stricken. “They’ll welcome you, Master Froggit. They probably think you are dead. How beautiful they shall find it that you are not! Think—the number of Cobblersawls has been halved at least; you shall be twice as precious . . .”

Possum shook her head. “They’ll see only the ones they lost.”

Once more she slipped the goggles on. Whatever she foresaw as she peered through the bone lenses at Nicolas, she did not flinch. But I watched him closely, the impossible radiance that rose up in him, brighter than his silver pipe, brighter than his broken edges, and he listened to Possum’s prophecy in rapturous terror, and with hope. I’d never seen the Pied Piper look anything like hopeful before, in all the years I’d known him.

“We are coming with you,” Possum prophesied. No one gainsaid her. No one even tried. “We are going to your cottage. You will teach us how to play music. We will learn many songs from you, and . . . and make up even more! When the first snow falls, we four shall venture into the Hill. And under it. Deep and wide, word will spread of a band of strange musicians: Nicolas and the Oracles. Lords and Ladies and Dragons and Sirens, they will all invite us to their courts and caves and coves to play for them. Froggit on the drums. Greenpea on her fiddle. You on your pipe. And I?”

Greenpea began to laugh. The sound was rusty, but true. “You’ll sing, of course, Possum! You have the truest voice. Ulia Gol was so mad when you wouldn’t sing up the bones for her!”

“Yes,” Possum whispered, “I will sing true songs in the Realm of Lies, and all who hear me will listen.”

All right. Enough of this yammering. My guts were cramping.

“Great!” I exclaimed. “You guys’ll be great. Musicians get all the girls anyway. Or, you know”—I nodded at Greenpea and Possum—“the dreamy-eyed, long-haired laddies. Or whatever. The other way around. However you want it. Always wanted to learn guitar myself. I’d look pretty striking with a guitar, don’t you think? I could go to the lake and play for Dora Rose. She’d like that about as much as a slap on the . . . Anyway, it’s a thought.”

“Maurice.” Nicolas clapped his hand to my shoulder. “You are hungry. You always babble when you are hungry. Come. Eat my food and drink my Faerie ale, and I shall spread blankets enough on the floor for all of us.” He beamed around at the three children, at me, and I swear his face was like a bonfire.

“My friends,” he said. “My friends. How merry we shall be.”

• • • •

Later that night, when they were all cuddled up and sleeping the sleep of the semi-innocent, or at least the iniquitously fatigued, I crept out of that cottage in the lee of the Hill and snuck back to the Heart Glade.

Call it a hunch. Call it ants in my antsy pants. I don’t know. Something was going on, and I had to see it. So what? So I get curious sometimes.

Wouldn’t you know it? I made it through the Maze Wood only to find I was right yet again! They weren’t kidding when they called me Maurice the Incomparable. (And by “they,” I mean “me,” of course.) Sometimes I know things. My whiskers twitch, or maybe my palms itch, and I just know.

What hung from the juniper tree in that gray light before full dawn wasn’t nearly as pretty as a Swan Princess or as holy and mysterious as a clutch of silver watermelon eggs.

Nope. This time the ornaments swinging from the branches were much plainer and more brutal. The juniper tree itself, decked out in its new accessories, looked darker and squatter than I’d ever beheld it, and by the gratified jangling in its blackly green needles, seemed very pleased with itself.

Ever see an ogre after a mob of bereaved parents gets through with her?

Didn’t think so. But I have.

Certain human responses can trump even an ogre’s fell enchantments. Watching twenty kids disappear right out from under your helpless gaze all because your mayor was a cheapskate might induce a few of them. Hanging was the least of what they did to her. The only way I knew her was by the tattered crimson of her gown.

Mortals. Mortals and their infernal ingenuity. I shook my head in admiration.

And was that . . .?

Yes, it was! Indeed, it was! My old friend, Henchmen Hans himself. Loyal to the end, swinging from a rope of his own near the mayoral gallows branch. And wearing his second best suit, too, bless him. Though torn and more than a little stained, his second best was a far sight better than what I presently wore. Needed something a bit more flamboyant than a dog blanket, didn’t I, if I was going to visit Lake Serenus in the morning? Bring a swan girl a fresh bag of caramels. Help her babysit. You know. Like you do.

Waste not, want not—isn’t that what the wharf boys say? A Rat Folk philosophy if I ever heard one. So, yeah, I’d be stripping my good old pal Hans right down to his bare essentials, or I’m not my mother’s son. And then I’d strip him of more than that.

See, I’d had to share the Pied Piper’s fine repast with three starving mortal children earlier that night. It’s not that they didn’t deserve their victuals as much as, say, I (although, really, who did?), and it’s not like Nicolas didn’t press me to eat seconds and thirds. But I still hadn’t gotten nearly as much as my ravenous little rat’s heart desired.

The juniper tree whispered.

It might have said anything.

But I’m pretty sure I heard, “Help yourself, Maurice.”

—For the erstwhile Injustice League

© 2015 by C.S.E. Cooney. Originally published by Mythic Delirium Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C.S.E. Cooney (csecooney.com) is the author of Bone Swans: Stories (Mythic Delirium 2015). The title story is a Nebula Award nominee, and appears in Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas 2016. She is the author of the Dark Breakers series, Jack o’ the Hills, The Witch in the Almond Tree, and a poetry collection called How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes, which features her Rhysling Award-winning poem “The Sea King’s Second Bride.” A graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction and Theatre departments, Cooney works as an audiobook narrator for Tantor Media. Her alterego Brimstone Rhine has put out two EPs: Alecto! Alecto! and The Headless Bride. Her short fiction and poetry can be found at Uncanny Magazine, Lakeside Circus, Black Gate, Papaveria Press, Strange Horizons, Apex, GigaNotoSaurus, Goblin Fruit, Clockwork Phoenix 3 & 5, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies, and elsewhere.

BOOK EXCERPT: The Big Book of Science Fiction (Vintage Books)

Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer | 2515 words

Introduction
(excerpt)

Since the days of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells, science fiction has not just helped define and shape the course of literature but reached well beyond fictional realms to influence our perspectives on culture, science, and technology. Ideas like electric cars, space travel, and forms of advanced communication comparable to today’s cell phone all first found their way into the public’s awareness through science fiction. In stories like Alicia Yánez Cossío’s “The IWM 100” from the 1970s you can even find a clear prediction of Information Age giants like Google—and when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the event was a very real culmination of a yearning already expressed through science fiction for many decades.

Science fiction has allowed us to dream of a better world by creating visions of future societies without prejudice or war. Dystopias, too, like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, have had their place in science fiction, allowing writers to comment on injustice and dangers to democracy. Where would Eastern Bloc writers have been without the creative outlet of science fiction, which by seeming not to speak about the present day often made it past the censors? For many under Soviet domination during those decades, science fiction was a form of subversion and a symbol of freedom. Today, science fiction continues to ask “What if?” about such important topics as global warming, energy dependence, the toxic effects of capitalism, and the uses of our modern technology, while also bringing back to readers strange and wonderful visions.

No other form of literature has been so relevant to our present yet been so filled with visionary and transcendent moments. No other form has been as entertaining, either. But until now there has been no definitive and complete collection that truly captured the global influence and significance of this dynamic genre—bringing together authors from all over the world and from both the “genre” and “literary” ends of the fiction spectrum. The Big Book of Science Fiction covers the entire twentieth century, presenting, in chronological order, stories from more than thirty countries, from the pulp space opera of Edmond Hamilton to the literary speculations of Jorge Luis Borges, from the pre-Afrofuturism of W. E. B. Du Bois to the second-wave feminism of James Tiptree Jr.—and beyond!

What you find within these pages may surprise you. It definitely surprised us.

WHAT IS THE “GOLDEN AGE” OF SCIENCE FICTION?

Even people who do not read science fiction have likely heard the term “the Golden Age of Science Fiction.” The actual Golden Age of Science Fiction lasted from about the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, and is often conflated for general readers with the preceding Age of the Pulps (1920s to mid-1930s). The Age of the Pulps had been dominated by the editor of Amazing Stories, Hugo Gernsback. Sometimes called the Father of Science Fiction, Gernsback was most famously photographed in an all-encompassing “Isolator” author helmet, attached to an oxygen tank and breathing apparatus.

The Golden Age dispensed with the Isolator, coinciding as it did with the proliferation of American science fiction magazines, the rise of the ultimately divisive editor John W. Campbell at Astounding Science Fiction (such strict definitions and such a dupe for Dianetics!), and a proto-market for science fiction novels (which would only reach fruition in the 1950s). This period also saw the rise to dominance of authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, C. L. Moore, Robert Heinlein, and Alfred Bester. It fixed science fiction in the public imagination as having a “sense of wonder” and a “can-do” attitude about science and the universe, sometimes based more on the earnest, naïve covers than the actual content, which could be dark and complex.

But “the Golden Age” has come to mean something else as well. In his classic, oft-quoted book on science fiction, Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction (1984), the iconic anthologist and editor David Hartwell asserted that “the Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve.” Hartwell, an influential gatekeeper in the field, was making a point about the arguments that “rage until the small of the morning” at science fiction conventions among “grown men and women” about that time when “every story in every magazine was a master work of daring, original thought.” The reason readers argue about whether the Golden Age occurred in the 1930s, 1950s, or 1970s, according to Hartwell, is because the true age of science fiction is the age at which the reader has no ability to tell good fiction from bad fiction, the excellent from the terrible, but instead absorbs and appreciates just the wonderful visions and exciting plots of the stories.

This is a strange assertion to make, one that seems to want to make excuses. It’s often repeated without much analysis of how such a brilliant anthology editor also credited with bringing literary heavyweights like Gene Wolfe and Philip K. Dick to readers would want to (inadvertently?) apologize for science fiction while at the same time engaging in a sentimentality that seems at odds with the whole enterprise of truly speculative fiction. (Not to mention dissing twelve-year-olds!)

Perhaps one reason for Hartwell’s stance can be found in how science fiction in the United States, and to some extent in the United Kingdom, rose out of pulp magazine delivery systems seen as “low art.” A pronounced “cultural cringe” within science fiction often combines with the brutal truth that misfortunes of origin often plague literature, which can assign value based on how swanky a house looks from the outside rather than what’s inside. The new Kafka who next arises from cosmopolitan Prague is likely to be hailed a savior, but not so much the one who arises from, say, Crawfordville, Florida.

There is also something of a need to apologize for the ma-and-pop tradition exemplified by the pulps, with their amateurish and eccentric editors, who sometimes had little formal training and possessed as many eccentricities as freckles, and who came to dominate the American science fiction world early on. Sometimes an Isolator was the least of it.

Yet even with regard to the pulps, evidence suggests that these magazines at times entertained more sophisticated content than generally given credit for, so that in a sense an idea like “the Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve” undermines the truth about such publications. It also renders invisible all of the complex science fiction being written outside of the pulp tradition.

Therefore, we humbly offer the assertion that contrary to popular belief and based on all of the evidence available to us . . . the actual Golden Age of Science Fiction is twenty-one, not twelve. The proof can be found in the contents of this anthology, where we have, as much as possible, looked at the totality of what we think of “science fiction,” without privileging the dominant mode, but also without discarding it. That which may seem overbearing or all of a type at first glance reveals its individuality and uniqueness when placed in a wider context. At third or fourth glance, you may even find that stories from completely different traditions have commonalities and speak to each other in interesting ways.

BUILDING A BETTER DEFINITION OF “SCIENCE FICTION”

We evoked the names of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells at the beginning of this introduction for a very specific reason. All three are useful entry points or origin points for science fiction because they do not exist so far back in time as to make direct influence seem ethereal or attenuated, they are still known in the modern era, and because the issues they dealt with permeate what we call the “genre” of science fiction even today.

We hesitate to invoke the slippery and preternatural word influence, because influence appears and disappears and reappears, sidles in and has many mysterious ways. It can be as simple yet profound as reading a text as a child and forgetting it, only to have it well up from the subconscious years later, or it can be a clear and all-consuming passion. At best we can only say that someone cannot be influenced by something not yet written or, in some cases, not yet translated. Or that influence may occur not when a work is published but when the writer enters the popular imagination—for example, as Wells did through Orson Welles’s infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds (1938) or, to be silly for a second, Mary Shelley through the movie Young Frankenstein (1974).

For this reason even wider claims of influence on science fiction, like writer and editor Lester del Rey’s assertion that the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest written science fiction story, seem appropriative, beside the point, and an overreach for legitimacy more useful as a “tell” about the position of science fiction in the 1940s and 1950s in North America.

But we brought up our triumvirate because they represent different strands of science fiction. The earliest of these authors, Mary Shelley, and her Frankenstein (1818), ushered in a modern sensibility of ambivalence about the uses of technology and science while wedding the speculative to the horrific in a way reflected very early on in science fiction. The “mad scientist” trope runs rife through the pages of the science fiction pulps and even today in their modern equivalents. She also is an important figure for feminist SF.

Jules Verne, meanwhile, opened up lines of inquiry along more optimistic and hopeful lines. For all that Verne liked to create schematics and specific detail about his inventions—like the submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)—he was a very happy puppy who used his talents in the service of scientific romanticism, not “hard science fiction.”

H. G. Wells’s fiction was also dubbed “scientific romanticism” during his lifetime, but his work existed somewhere between these two foci. His most useful trait as the godfather of modern science fiction is the granularity of his writing. Because his view of the world existed at an intersection of sociology, politics, and technology, Wells was able to create complex geopolitical and social contexts for his fiction—indeed, after he abandoned science fiction, Wells’s later novels were those of a social realist, dealing with societal injustice, among other topics. He was able to quantify and fully realize extrapolations about the future and explore the iniquities of modern industrialization in his fiction.

The impulse to directly react to how industrialization has affected our lives occurs very early on in science fiction—for example, in Karl Hans Strobl’s cautionary factory tale “The Triumph of Mechanics” (1907) and even in the playful utopian visions of Paul Scheerbart, which often pushed back against bad elements of “modernization.” (For his optimism, Scheerbart perished in World War I, while Strobl’s “reward” was to fall for fascism and join the Nazi Party—in part, a kind of repudiation of the views expressed in “The Triumph . . .”)

Social and political issues also peer out from science fiction from the start, and not just in Wells’s work. Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein’s “Sultana’s Dream” (1905) is a potent feminist utopian vision. W. E. B. Du Bois’s “The Comet” (1920) isn’t just a story about an impending science-fictional catastrophe but also the start of a conversation about race relations and a proto-Afrofuturist tale. The previously untranslated Yefim Zozulya’s “The Doom of Principal City” (1918) presages the atrocities perpetrated by the communism of the Soviet Union and highlights the underlying absurdities of certain ideological positions. (It’s perhaps telling that these early examples do not come from the American pulp SF tradition.)

This kind of eclectic stance also suggests a simple yet effective definition for science fiction: it depicts the future, whether in a stylized or realistic manner. There is no other definitional barrier to identifying science fiction unless you are intent on defending some particular territory. Science fiction lives in the future, whether that future exists ten seconds from the Now or whether in a story someone builds a time machine a century from now in order to travel back into the past. It is science fiction whether the future is phantasmagorical and surreal or nailed down using the rivets and technical jargon of “hard science fiction.” A story is also science fiction whether the story in question is, in fact, extrapolation about the future or using the future to comment on the past or present.

Thinking about science fiction in this way delinks the actual content or “experience” delivered by science fiction from the commodification of that genre by the marketplace. It does not privilege the dominant mode that originated with the pulps over other forms. But neither does it privilege those other manifestations over the dominant mode. Further, this definition eliminates or bypasses the idea of a “turf war” between genre and the mainstream, between commercial and literary, and invalidates the (weird ignorant snobbery of) tribalism that occurs on one side of the divide and the faux snobbery (ironically based on ignorance) that sometimes manifests on the other.

Wrote the brilliant editor Judith Merril in the seventh annual edition of The Year’s Best S-F (1963), out of frustration:

“But that’s not science fiction . . . !” Even my best friends (to invert a paraphrase) keep telling me: That’s not science fiction! Sometimes they mean it couldn’t be s-f, because it’s good. Sometimes it couldn’t be because it’s not about spaceships or time machines. (Religion or politics or psychology isn’t science fiction—is it?) Sometimes (because some of my best friends are s-f fans) they mean it’s not really science fiction—just fantasy or satire or something like that.

On the whole, I think I am very patient. I generally manage to explain again, just a little wearily, what the “S-F” in the title of this book means, and what science fiction is, and why the one contains the other, without being constrained by it. But it does strain my patience when the exclamation is compounded to mean, “Surely you don’t mean to use that? That’s not science fiction!”—about a first-rate piece of the honest thing.

Standing on either side of this debate is corrosive—detrimental to the study and celebration of science fiction; all it does is sidetrack discussion or analysis, which devolves into SF/not SF or intrinsically valuable/not valuable. And, for the general reader weary of anthologies prefaced by a series of “inside baseball” remarks, our definition hopefully lessens your future burden of reading these words.

From THE BIG BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION. Introduction and compilation copyright © 2016 by VanderMeer Creative, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Over a thirty-year career, Ann VanderMeer has won numerous awards for her editing work, including the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award. Whether as editor-in-chief for Weird Tales for five years or in her current role as an acquiring editor for Tor.com, Ann has built her reputation on acquiring fiction from diverse and interesting new talents. As co-founder of Cheeky Frawg Books, she has helped develop a wide-ranging line of mostly translated fiction. Featuring a who’s who of world literature, Ann’s anthologies include the critically acclaimed Best American Fantasy series, The Weird, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Sisters of the Revolution, and The Big Book of SF (Vintage).

Called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker, Jeff VanderMeer has been a published writer since age fourteen. His most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy. One of the publishing events of 2014, the trilogy garnered wide-spread critical acclaim, was optioned by Paramount Pictures, and made more than thirty year’s best lists, including Entertainment Weekly’s top 10. His nonfiction appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and the Atlantic.com. Recently, he sold his next novel, Borne, to Farrar, Straus and Giroux in a deal announced by the Hollywood Reporter. VanderMeer also wrote the world’s first fully illustrated creative-writing guide, Wonderbook.

Movie Review: Ghostbusters

Carrie Vaughn | 2133 words

“Safety Lights are for Dudes!”

I had no idea what to expect going into this new Ghostbusters movie. The vitriol over it during the previous year has been exhausting. Never have I wanted so badly for a movie to be good, but had so little sign as to whether it actually would be. I’m happy to report that this is a ridiculously fun movie. It’s not perfect—my biggest complaint is that the pacing dragged in places. But for the most part, the choices made here were good ones, and I left the theater smiling.

First, a couple of things that might be helpful to know:

(1) It’s a reboot, not a sequel. The events of the first movie didn’t happen in this universe. It’s an entirely new story told in its own way.

(2) I hesitate to call it genderflipped. That implies a one-to-one correlation between the characters of the first movie and the ones in this (i.e. female versions of Ray Stanz and Egon Spengler and so on). That’s not the case: These are four entirely Fnew characters with their own names and personalities, caught up in their own story. This is very much one of the film’s strengths.

The story: Erin (Kristen Wiig) is a physics professor up for tenure at Columbia. She also has a dark past as a paranormal investigator that she’s desperate to keep hidden from her academic superior (who asks if she could perhaps supply a recommendation from a more prestigious institution than Princeton), so she’s deeply unhappy when a book on the paranormal that she co-wrote back in the day shows up for sale on Amazon. This is brought to her attention by a historian from a historic mansion museum which is very probably haunted, and he wants her to find out what’s really going on. She confronts the other co-author of the book, her old but now estranged friend Abby (Melissa McCarthy), who never gave up paranormal investigations. Abby has a new assistant, the rather crazed engineer Jillian (Kate McKinnon). The trio goes to investigate the mansion—and boom, there really is a ghost. Erin’s ecstatic video rant about the event ends up on YouTube, and she’s fired from her job. So are Abby and Jillian. They decide to go into business for themselves, with one primary goal: to catch a ghost and scientifically prove the existence of the paranormal.

Lucky for them, there’s an insane villain in the city who is trying to bring about the apocalypse by building paranormal amplifier devices along ley lines in order to generate excess amounts of paranormal energy and thereby destroy everything. So, you know, lots of ghosts around.

The newly-formed Ghostbusters make several attempts to catch ghosts, refining their equipment along the way, acquiring a fourth member—MTA worker and amateur historian Patty (Leslie Jones)—and a very pretty dolt of a secretary named Kevin (Chris Hemsworth, who continually amazes me with his range). They also have run-ins with the mayor and Homeland Security who are aware that something weird is going on in the city but would rather not admit that they need the help of these super nerds.

The film is a fascinating mash-up of tropes and genres. Ghost story, of course. But also horror, which is something the original movie didn’t do. In the opening scene, a guide at the haunted mansion flees down a rickety staircase into an abandoned basement with no light. The classic, cliché horror movie scenario. To his credit, the guide immediately acknowledges this a stupid thing to do, right before the film’s first ghost attacks him. We also get possessions and haunted mirrors, mannequins come to life, doors that open of their own accord. There are moments when this Ghostbusters is kind of actually scary. Death is on the table, here: people die in this movie, which they didn’t in the first. Mixed into this is the rather intriguing revelation that the Department of Homeland Security appears to have an X-Files-type division handling paranormal activity, that actually seems to get taken seriously by the suits in power. It’s not that they think the Ghostbusters are nuts; they just don’t want them going public. So throw a little supernatural conspiracy thriller into the mix.

This is also a superhero movie, the kind where the heroes develop powers and face down a villain who is oddly a mirror-image of themselves, using much the same technology. Evil guy Rowan is a social misfit, much like our heroes, and it turns out he got his ideas for how to manipulate the paranormal world from the book Erin and Abby wrote together. The climactic battle isn’t just good guy v. bad guy, it’s a battle of philosophies and worldviews: Do you use your powers to help people, or to make the world burn? And like all classic superhero movies, the battle very nearly destroys New York City, with Avengers-levels of mayhem. Extensive use of modern SFX means the climactic battle features the main characters duking it out with hundreds of ghosts in Times Square. The Ghostbusters have an array of weapons, which means they can really whale on the ghosts in outright fistfights. One might feel let down that this isn’t as simple and clever as the climactic battle in the original film. But I’d point out—this film is working with a different toolbox of tropes.

Running through it all is a really lovely layer of comedy, the kind of comedy where one of the best running gags has to do with a carton of wonton soup. The charm of the four actresses really carries the thing. They have great chemistry and it’s impossible not to love them all.

Like a lot of remakes, the film walks a fine line of nostalgia for its predecessor, between homage on the one hand and straight-up fan service on the other. It incorporates a whole slew of recognizable story beats: being brought to the mayor’s office, arriving at a beautiful art-deco building which they will proceed to destroy in attempting to capture a ghost, the choosing of the form of the final baddie. And everybody gets a cameo. Everybody. Including a bust of Harold Ramis as Egon outside Erin’s office. (The whole film is dedicated to Ramis, as well it should be.) Ernie Hudson’s cameo didn’t show up until close to the end, and I was afraid he wasn’t going to get one, but then he did as Patty’s Uncle Bill, and the sigh of affection that passed through the audience at that moment was heartwarming. And I’m determined to believe that the climactic battle, in which the villain takes the form of a giant version of the ghost from the Ghostbuster’s logo and marches through the city, is an homage to the opening credits of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon. And yes, there’s an after credits Easter egg that may turn out to be important . . .

And now, let’s talk about sexism. Safety lights are on!

A few months ago, a handful of the angry guys who think they own pop culture loudly announced how the new Ghostbusters had ruined their childhoods and they weren’t going to stand for it. And it wasn’t because all the characters were women, oh no. It’s just that Hollywood remade something that shouldn’t be remade and they had expected a sequel with the original actors and now weren’t getting that, never mind that we no longer have Harold Ramis with us and that the second Ghostbusters movie was objectively terrible, and—

No, actually. They’re angry because of the girl cooties. You want to know how I know it really is all about gender? Because these guys didn’t make a peep when the completely ill-advised Robocop remake came out a couple of years ago. And really, could Hollywood do anything more offensive to pop culture than release a PG-13 version of Robocop? My God, what’s the point? The original was brutal and savage, one of the best SF satires of all time, and one of the definitive movies of the ’80s. A remake was a horrible idea. I assume it was terrible—I didn’t go see it, because angry guys on the Internet aren’t the only ones who can decide not to see a movie out of sheer unmitigated pique.

Now, if the Robocop remake had been genderflipped . . . say, Officer Ann Lewis being made into the cyborg . . . I bet we would have heard something about ruined childhoods then.

(Aside: I am now so desperate for a genderflipped Robocop remake I can hardly see straight.)

I like for filmmakers to have a really good reason to remake a classic, beyond pandering to an undiscerning audience. Making all the main characters women is a really good basis for a remake. Why? Because Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin never made a movie together.

Backing up for a minute: The original Ghostbusters wasn’t just a great SF comedy. It was part of a string of ground-breaking comedies made by the early classes of alumni of Saturday Night Live: Animal House, Caddyshack, The Blues Brothers, Stripes, and so on.

The first SNL class included three women, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman. And during that early-’80s stretch, none of them made movies with the visibility and reach of those of their SNL colleagues. (I should also note that black comedian Garrett Morris, also part of the original class, never got a major movie either. Since then they’ve all had really solid careers in other areas like TV and voiceover work, except for Radner, who passed away far too young in 1989.)

Maybe Radner and Curtin never made a movie together because they hated each other in real life. Maybe they just didn’t want to. Or maybe systemic sexism meant they never got the chance? (Curtin has gone on record saying that John Belushi did not think women were funny and would actively sabotage sketches written by women.¹)

For better or worse, for the last forty years American comedy films have drawn on the cast of SNL for talent. For the last ten or so years, a slew of women alumna of SNL have been making ground-breaking, women-led comedy: Tiny Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, etc. Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are current cast members. Ghostbusters isn’t just a remake—it’s part of a movement, and it’s following in the tradition of its predecessor by taking advantage of an amazing pool of experienced talent. One can argue that director Paul Feig’s string of women-centric comedies (Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy) laid the groundwork for the new Ghostbusters in much the same way the string of SNL alumni-led comedies paved the way for the original. It was time for an all-woman Ghostbusters, guys. Or something like it. It was way past time.

Imagine for a moment if the playing field had been level back in the day. Imagine the kind of women-led comedies we might have gotten. Imagine if some of the comedies we did get had included women characters as more than props and foils. Imagine, just for a moment, if the original Ghostbusters had starred women. Like, a Ghostbusters starring Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and oh, just for kicks, let’s say Goldie Hawn and Whoopi Goldberg. God, just think of it.

Radner and Curtin never made a movie together, when in a perfect world they very probably should have. Which is why movies like this Ghostbusters, why this current collection of women comedians who are making movies together and making such a big splash are so very, very important. The sexist vitriol is nothing more than the usual harassment that’s always tried to keep girls out of the club house.

Apart from all that, the bottom line is this: I had a really good time watching Ghostbusters, in which four really quirky, awesome, atypical characters got to kick some serious ass and have a joyful time doing so.

1. Source: AfterEllen (bit.ly/Belushi_Women)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series, the most recent of which is the fourteenth installment, Kitty Saves the World. Her superhero novel Dreams of the Golden Age was released in January 2014.  She has also written young adult novels, Voices of Dragons and Steel, and the fantasy novels, Discord’s Apple and After the Golden Age. Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, from Lightspeed to Tor.com and George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy attack dog. Learn more at carrievaughn.com.

Book Reviews: August 2016

Sunil Patel | 2262 words

This month, reviewer Sunil Patel takes a look at Indra Das’ The Devourers, Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine Complex, Laura Lam’s False Hearts, and Emily Skrutskie’s The Abyss Surrounds Us.

The Devourers
Indra Das
Hardback/Ebook
ISBN 978-1101967515
Del Rey Books, July 2016
320 pages

One December night in Kolkata, historian Alok Mukherjee meets a man who casually reveals that he is half werewolf. Curious but disbelieving, Alok agrees to the stranger’s request: transcribe a journal, a historical account that may explain how one can be “half werewolf.” And so begins the incredible tale of The Devourers.

I love this startlingly original book for so many reasons. Indra Das’s ambitious take on werewolves, which incorporates worldwide shapeshifter myths and posits that all of these creatures, from djinn to rakshasas, are simply different names for the same thing. The lush, evocative language that continually engages all the senses, conjuring images and feelings through the perfect combination and rhythm of words. The complex, flawed, fascinating characters at the center of the story.

What ultimately makes The Devourers such an amazing book for me is that it is a story about stories, about our lives as narratives. The stranger tells Alok his own story, and he offers Alok stories that inform his past, and Alok tells us all of them. Throughout the book, I asked myself whose story it was. Was it Alok’s? The stranger’s? The narrators of these firsthand accounts? All of their lives are intertwined, creating an epic yet intensely personal saga that spans centuries, set against the backdrop of the Mughal Empire and all its human concerns, unaware of these shapeshifting invaders.

Das writes these shapeshifters as true beasts, primal forces of nature. They piss, they shit, they vomit; Das does not shy away from their monstrous bodily fluids. And yet despite the preponderance of pissing penises, I found them utterly enchanting. Shapeshifters do not understand humans, but since they were once human themselves, and they do consume them, they find themselves drawn to human emotions, like love. But the book does not sugarcoat the idea of brutal devourers in search of love any more than it does them. This book is beautiful and horrific, often at the same time.

I honestly don’t know how to address the treatment of race, gender, and sexuality, as Das makes bold, deliberate choices that may make one intended point but still prove unsatisfying. For instance, we spend far more time with white werewolves in Mughal-era India than the native rakshasas; then again, these unwelcome foreigners are portrayed quite negatively. The shapeshifters are presented as almost exclusively male, and while this is a very well told male-focused story that does examine gender dynamics, I would have liked an imagined world where more women could be terrifying werewolves. Rape is a central plot element, and though the scene is not graphic and the survivor has a voice, I’m conflicted about how much agency I feel she truly has. My misgivings were overcome by the brilliance of the book overall, however. This is a book with the most fucked-up bisexual genderflipping werewolf romance imaginable—I don’t know if it gets everything right, but, damn, it’s worth discussing.

From its intriguing opening scene to its breathtaking final monologue, The Devourers sank its teeth into my heart and my mind. What a rich, engaging, complicated reading experience. This is not a book to be devoured, but savored.

Heroine Complex
Sarah Kuhn
Paperback/Ebook
ISBN 978-0756410841
DAW Books, July 2016
384 pages

Writing a good superhero novel is hard. Writing a great superhero novel is even harder, but that’s what Sarah Kuhn has done with Heroine Complex. I marvel at all the things it accomplishes in under 400 pages, and I don’t know where to begin.

So how about demonic cupcakes? Yes, I said demonic cupcakes. Heroine Complex opens with San Francisco’s beloved superhero, Aveda Jupiter, punching and kicking demonic cupcakes while her personal assistant, Evie Tanaka, films the fight for her fans. Sometimes portals to a demonic Otherworld open; it’s a thing. It’s how Jupiter and many others got their superpowers, after all, and now tourists flock to the “Demon City.” Kuhn devises a modern approach to superheroism in the social media age, with Jupiter concerned about her Twitter followers and everything written about her by annoying gossip blogger Maisy Kane. This all sounds fun, right? It is fun!

But Kuhn adds incredible depth to her main characters, both Asian-American women (one Chinese, one half-Japanese), best friends who grew up never seeing superheroes who looked like them until the Hong Kong action film The Heroic Trio. They have a tight bond, and Evie owes Aveda a lot, but now she lives in her shadow. How do you play subordinate to someone you were supposed to be on equal footing with? What kind of years-long resentment and tension can come bubbling to the surface? When do you decide that you’ve had enough? I love the complexity of their relationship, and so many others in the book. From Evie’s little sister, Bea, to Aveda’s bodyguard, Lucy Valdez, everyone feels like a real person that Evie’s spent time with, that you want to spend time with. Except maybe Maisy.

Heroine Complex must have superpowers of its own to be this good. It’s a fun and enjoyable read, thanks to Evie’s narration, and it’s funny because, well, demonic cupcakes. But Kuhn grounds the characters so well that the goofier elements never feel too silly; they’re simply a part of the world she’s created, an alternate version of San Francisco filled with local celebrities and popular hipster spots . . . that happens to be invaded by demons occasionally. And the mystery of the demons unfolds slowly, as Evie picks up on little clues that neither she nor the reader can put together until the final plot twists will have you flipping back pages to see the masterful way Kuhn set everything up. The action scenes sparkle and the sex scenes simmer. There’s something for everyone in this rollicking tale of kissing, cupcakes, and karaoke.

False Hearts
Laura Lam
Hardcover/Ebook
ISBN 978-1447286424
Tor Books, June 2016
384 pages

Another book about multiracial, bisexual, formerly conjoined twin sisters raised in a technophobic cult who get caught up in a web of murder within a dreamwalking-drug syndicate? Somehow Laura Lam mashes up loads of cool ideas into one unique experience with False Hearts.

Lam wisely wraps all of her disparate elements around a familiar framework: a murder mystery. Tila Collins is accused of murder in San Francisco, a city that hasn’t even seen a murder in decades thanks to the amount of internal and external surveillance in this future. To clear her name, her twin, Taema, must assume her identity and infiltrate the Ratel, who traffic in a drug called Zeal that allows people to lucid dream their wildest fantasies . . . and possibly a darker, more violent version called Verve. As Taema steps into her sister’s life and investigates crime lords, Tila recounts their time in the Hearth, investigating her own memories of being brainwashed until her fascination with the outside world finally led her and her sister to escape to it.

Once False Hearts gets going, it never stops. It’s the kind of book you want to put down if only to torture yourself at moments of high tension and get that welcome sense of relief when you return. Lam offers plenty of reasons to keep you turning pages. The mystery of the Ratel and its origins. Tila’s alleged murder, and all the secrets she kept from her sister that she now needs Taema to discover if she doesn’t want to end up in cryostasis. Taema’s personal and working relationship with her partner, Detective Nazarin. All the technology, from optical implants that project crime scene holograms and flesh parlors that remold faces to the Chair that can download information into your brain and allow you to walk into other people’s drug-induced dreams. The Hearth backstory that makes Tila’s otherwise static narrative feel dynamic since you want to know so much more about that cult.

False Hearts succeeds most at being a fun technothriller with twists and turns that had me slapping the book and cursing at revelations I should have seen coming. I love the futuristic world even though I never got a good sense of how it developed or even how far in the future it was, and while that information may not be relevant to the plot, how long the Hearth has been around is. I love how the book plays with identity, but it doesn’t dig very deep into it, and the relationship between the twins didn’t resonate as strongly with me as I’d hoped. But even the fact that Lam manages to make this mash-up of elements work this well is quite impressive. Despite the marketing department’s attempt to describe it in terms of the pop culture du jour, False Hearts is a true original.

The Abyss Surrounds Us
Emily Skrutskie
Paperback/Ebook
ISBN 978-0738746913
Flux Books, February 2016
273 pages

Cassandra Leung has been training her whole life to command Reckoners, genetically engineered sea monsters bred for defense against pirates in the NeoPacific, and she views the day she can finally go out on her own as the day her life begins. Unfortunately, she has the worst first day ever, as her ship is attacked, and she’s kidnapped by pirates . . . and forced to train a baby Reckoner for the enemy.

A baby Reckoner they can’t possibly have, given the strict regulations surrounding Reckoners.

Emily Skrutskie’s conception of sea monsters comes from the real-life monsters of the sea, making them easy to imagine. Reckoners come in varieties like terrapoid, cephalopoid, cetoid, and serpentoid, and Skrutskie provides just enough tactile detail to bring these beasts to life. The overall worldbuilding is a bit shaky, as it isn’t quite clear how or why the world got to a point where we needed friggin’ sea monsters to deal with pirates. Cas gives some basic background on what the world is like, and it’s enough to accept so I can enjoy a book about pirates and sea monsters.

But the true marvel of The Abyss Surrounds Us is that the sea monsters are not even the most compelling part. Sure, I loved each and every scene that involved Cas training her baby sea monster, who is so cute and deadly and at one point eats a helicopter. First and foremost, however, the book is about character. Cas struggles with the things the pirate queen Santa Elena makes her do, as she knows that pirates murder her people every day. And her Reckoners. She fights her attraction to her handler, Swift—who in my head is literally Pirate Taylor Swift—because that hot pirate is as much her captor as Santa Elena. At first, the idea of a romance between a prisoner and her captor made me uncomfortable, but Skrutskie absolutely understands the power dynamics involved and sells their relationship as something more powerful and complex than simple Stockholm Syndrome. There’s more to Swift than what’s on the surface.

While Cas and Swift get the most character development, Santa Elena makes for an interesting villain because she’s characterized almost entirely by what she does. We understand who she is through the way she treats her crew, who all wear tattoos, essentially a brand they “willingly” give themselves. She threatens the safety and well-being of everyone constantly, and she’s more observant than Cas may give her credit for. The supporting characters are less fleshed out, but I appreciated the presence of an Indian pirate and an Islander pirate! Between this book and The Girl from Everywhere, it’s a good year for diverse pirates.

The Abyss Surrounds Us takes Cas on a sea adventure that will change who she is forever. While Skrutskie deftly tells one satisfying story in this book, the final page manages to be both resolution and cliffhanger. It’s a well-executed, completely earned moment, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sunil Patel is a Bay Area fiction writer and playwright who has written about everything from ghostly cows to talking beer. His plays have been performed at San Francisco Theater Pub and San Francisco Olympians Festival, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Fireside Magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Flash Fiction Online, The Book Smugglers, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Plus he is Assistant Editor of Mothership Zeta. His favorite things to consume include nachos, milkshakes, and narrative. Find out more at ghostwritingcow.com, where you can watch his plays, or follow him @ghostwritingcow. His Twitter has been described as “engaging,” “exclamatory,” and “crispy, crunchy, peanut buttery.”

Interview: Tim Powers

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy | 8341 words

Tim Powers is the author of such novels as The Anubis Gates, Last Call, and Declare. Along with his friends James Blaylock and K.W. Jeter, he’s considered one of the founders of the steampunk genre. He was also good friends with Philip K. Dick, who included a character based on Tim in his novel Valis. Tim’s pirate novel, On Stranger Tides, inspired the video game, The Secret of Monkey Island, and also provided the premise for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

This interview first appeared in January 2016 on Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by David Barr Kirtley and produced by John Joseph Adams. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the interview or other episodes.

Your new book is called Medusa’s Web; what’s that about?

Broadly speaking, I guess, it’s about a brother and sister who return to the decrepit mansion in the Hollywood Hills where they were brought up. Their aunt has died and left a will, and when they get there they discover that they’re enmeshed in a bunch of supernatural mysteries that have their origins in Hollywood in the 1920s.

Right, the book jacket describes this as The House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills.

Does it really? Okay. That’s not bad.

In what way do you think it’s similar to The House of Usher?

The House of Usher is mentioned in the book. At one point, there’s kind of ghostly communication with the dead aunt. In the midst of dementia and gibberish, she quotes some bits from The House of Usher, and so I kept that story in mind as I was plotting the book. So, it’s a big, old, dangerous house occupied by a couple of insane and evil people.

You sort of have two pairs of siblings, too, which kind of reminds one of The House of Usher.

In fact, one of them is named Madeline, as the sister was in The House of Usher.

So, then, Library Journal says, “This novel is as weird as anything Powers has written.” Do you agree with that?

Yeah. I started with idly reading a biography of Rudolph Valentino and discovered that it took two priests to give him last rites when he was dying. One priest came to attend in him in his hospital bed, and baffled, had to leave and come back with another priest in order to do it thoroughly. I thought that was intriguing. You know, what would constitute an obstacle in that?

Then the other thing was that I’ve always been struck by Cordwainer Smith’s story, “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” in which the adversaries are two-dimensional. I was thinking, “How would two-dimensional creatures even manifest themselves? Much less pose a threat.” And so, I took those two things, and researched very hard into Valentino, which led me to various other figures in Hollywood in the ’20s. And also to Aubrey Beardsley, who inspired Valentino’s second wife—she was a costume and set designer. And of course once Aubrey Beardsley came up, the idea of two-dimensional things looked pursuable, since drawings are two-dimensional, so it sort of went from there. As Library Journal said, it did wind up very weird.

Say more about your writing process, because this is how you write novels, right? You do a lot of research and you try to draw connections between the odd facts that you discover?

Yeah, it usually starts I’ll just be reading some non-fiction for fun and snag on some fact and think, “That seems irrational. That seems inadequately explained. Wait a minute, why would the guy do that?” And, if I run into two or three such snags in a non-fiction book, I start to think, “Maybe you could cook up a supernatural backstory in which those enigmatic or apparently irrational actions actually make sense.” And, as soon as I decide that, it stops being recreational reading.

For example, I almost pursued a book on mountain climbing after reading Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, so I got a whole bunch of books on mountain climbing, and it never went anywhere, but it might still one day. But I just read anything connected with the initial impetus, and I feel free to follow any sidelines that show up; like, if I discovered that Valentino had been an ardent beekeeper, or his father had been, or his family, I would have felt bound to read up on beekeeping looking for weird clues. As I read in this very widespread net way, I’m always looking for odd facts, persons, habits, tradition, rituals, locations that are too cool not to use. Once I’ve got twenty or thirty things that are too cool not to use, obviously I have twenty or thirty pieces of my eventual book, and so the trick then is to connect the dots. I never approach a project with a story in mind and then do research to shore it up. I always do the research looking for the pieces that will eventually make up the book. I have no story in mind before the research provides it.

One of your rules for yourself that I think is really interesting is that you say that you can’t violate any actual historical fact.

Yeah, that’s kind of for two reasons. One, I really want the story to seem to be taking place in this here actual world that we’re in. I don’t want any hint that it’s an alternate reality. I want to emphasize, no, it’s here. It’s this here reality. Sticking very strictly to the facts is sort of a good discipline, too. The readers are always smarter than you suspect. If I was to deviate from what I know actually happened, some readers would say, “Oh, I guess this must be some kind of imaginary world.”

And then, sort of superstitiously, if you look at it as an arbitrary rule, I feel like it’s good luck to stick with established facts, and days of the calendar, and who was actually where, and what they actually talked about. It seems like deviating from that reality just for the convenience of an easier assembled plot would be bad luck.

Right, and when you picked up this biography of Rudolph Valentino, were you a fan of his, or a fan of those sorts of films already?

Yeah, my wife and I are both big fans of silent movies, her more than me. She’s always telling me, “You’ve got to read this book. You’ve got to read up on this guy.” In fact, Medusa’s Web involves peripherally the murder of this 1920s director, William Desmond Taylor, and to this day, nobody knows who killed him. My wife said, “You’ve got to read this biography of William Desmond Taylor. It’s fascinating.” And so I did, and I thought, “You know, yeah, what the hell was going on there?” It was a pretty small world, really, a small society then in Hollywood. He was involved with Valentino and Natacha Rambova, who was Valentino’s second wife, and Alla Nazimova, who was a sort of glamour queen at the time, though she wound up in penury late in life. All of them turned out to be fascinating characters, and the structure of my book is such that my 2015 characters get to meet and interact with those historical people.

It sounds like it was a little dangerous being a director back then, because you mentioned that this guy, Thomas Ince, died under mysterious circumstances as well.

That’s right. I also deal with Thomas Ince’s death, which again was very mysterious. He died on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht during a little cruise, and everybody who had been guests on that cruise later insisted that they had not been. “Oh, I was nowhere near there. I was in New York.” And Ince’s body was taken off the boat and immediately cremated, and then Hearst paid a fortune to Ince’s widow, and in fact, there’s been a lot of speculation about what, exactly, killed Ince. There was a movie called, I think, The Cat’s [Meow] about that incident, and in that movie it was Hearst himself who killed Ince, because allegedly Ince had been carrying on with Hearst’s girlfriend, Marianne Davies.

What is it exactly that you and your wife find so interesting about these silent movies?

For one thing, it was a whole lot freer. It was, of course, way before all the codes, and there were a lot of things people worry about now that never occurred to those old movie makers to worry about: sexism, racism. It was kind of a wild and undisciplined field. And they were actually really good actors, since they didn’t have dialogue to convey things. People always think of silent movie stars as sort of mugging and using exaggerated expressions, but actually Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, many of them were really great actors.

And it’s interesting to see what they were able to accomplish with hardly any special effects. I mean, they could do some things in camera, like make someone seem to disappear or run things backwards, but all the stunts were absolutely real. Somebody had to actually do all those things. Plus, a silent movie could be shown anywhere in the world. All you had to do was change the language of the dialogue cards. It didn’t need dubbing or subtitles.

It was brief, since in 1927 the talkies came in. So, it was a brief period of movie making, but a lot deeper and richer than most people appreciate.

In particular, this book really focuses on this 1923 film, Salome. Why did you decide to kind of focus on that one?

Mainly because Natacha Rambova, who designed the costumes and the sets, was powerfully influenced by Aubrey Beardsley. In fact, in the credits it says, “inspired by Aubrey Beardsley,” and because I posit that Rambova and Alla Nazimova, who made the movie, who was the director and star, were both very involved with Valentino, so it was a short step to take a close look at that movie. And then once I watched the movie with the kind of paranoid, schizophrenic squint I adopt when I’m doing research, it was very easy to say that the movie, its details, were in fact closely aligned with the concerns of my book, the supernatural situation that I say applied at the time to those people. It’s a weird movie. It’s a kind of spooky, weird, senseless movie.

Those supernatural elements are really referenced, I think, in the title, Medusa’s Web. Do you want to say a bit about why you decided to title the book that way?

The two-dimensional things that provoke these sort of possessions, or visions, or trans-temporal interludes, are based on some abstract things Beardsley did, and it was easy to say that, well, they look like spiders. Let’s say they are eight-limbed patterns which provoke this effect on anyone who looks at them, and at that point, I always start thinking about mythology. I think, “Well, what do you have for spiders in mythology?” And I thought, “Well, there’s the African spiders, the Anansi, the African spider god, but Neil Gaiman kind of grabbed that.” So, I thought, “Well, what about Medusa? How many snakes were on her head? Let’s say it was eight.” And looking extensively into the Medusa mythology, I discovered that in the very oldest renderings of her she really was just a head, a bodiless head, and so when Perseus cut her head off, maybe that is the story remembered slightly wrong. Maybe she was always a bodiless head, and if we say she had eight snakes growing out of her head, you’re kind of at the spider at that point.

So, I conflated Medusa, and spiders, and webs, and I like to think that at least for the duration of somebody reading the book, it will sort of make sense.

And the characters in this book suggest that Medusa didn’t actually turn people to stone. That that’s a bit of a mistranslation. Is that true?

Right, I say that what the original Greek text was is something more like rigid, paralyzed, frozen, rather than literal granite, or something. That was a convenience for my plot, and a plausible thing to say. I mean, who’s going to say that the old Greek myth wasn’t that way?

Half the time, if it’s very late at night, I find sometimes when I open some new research book, it’ll appear to confirm my fictional theory, and I’ll think, “Oh my god, Powers, you’re not making this up. You’ve stumbled on the actual story here.” Except in the morning, I’m sane again.

Because you’re able to draw connections between this Medusa spider thing and all sorts of things. I mean, you mention King David, and La Mano Negra, and the Tarantella Dance, just all these kind of things.

Yeah, all that stuff fit in really with no shoehorning at all. The Tarantella Dance, for example, really was originally supposed to be done in order to cure the effects of a spider bite, and “Tarantella” is where the word, apparently, “tarantula” comes from. And I thought, “Well, jeez, that’s handy.” And Valentino lived for a while in Toronto where the Tarantella originated, and I think, “Jeepers, this is practically writing itself.” That’s the sort of moment where I think, “Oh my god, I bet this is all true.” And what were the other things you mentioned?

King David and La Mano Negra.

Yeah, La Mano Negra, of course, you’ve got a black hand, there’s five, put three more on it, and you’ve got eight limbs, eight legs. There is a story about King David hiding from, I think, King Saul—King David wasn’t King David yet—he hid in a cave and a spider obligingly quickly built a web across the mouth of the cave, and so when King Saul’s soldiers came by, they said, “Obviously, he ain’t hiding in that cave. He would have busted the spider web if he ran in there.” The spider helped David out, and of course it’s very easy to say, “Well, that’s how tradition remembers it, but actually, David hung one of these spider’s symbols over the mouth of the cave, which disoriented and provoked fits in his pursuers when they saw it.”

To come across a fact like that, do you go searching somehow for spider mythology? Or are you just reading random things all the time and coming across that sort of thing.

Both. Once I know the direction, I’ll start looking for mentions of spiders, or Medusa, or etc. Fortunately, for example, for the Bible, there’s giant concordances, and you can just look up “spiders” in the Bible, and it’ll give you every reference. Another handy thing is Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. You can look up Medusa, or spiders, or whatever is relevant in the back, and it’ll say, “Sophocles on,” “Plato on,” “Shakespeare on,” “Marlowe on,” and you can look up all those quotes, and with luck find one or two that make you think, “Oh boy, yes sir, uh huh, I can use this.”

How about in the films? Because you also mention odd spider references in films, like in Ingmar Bergman.

Yeah, that’s weird as hell, that Bergman movie, In a Glass Darkly?

Through a Glass Darkly.

A quote from St. Paul. There’s a weird scene in there where the woman who is going crazy says God in the form of a spider materialized out of a wall and tried to rape her. I think, “Cool,” and therefore I say—in fact what I say with all of this research is—“That’s no coincidence.” Bergman is referring to this phenomenon which had always been a secret vice in the movie industry. Always, with research, my governing principle is none of this is a coincidence. If Einstein did something in Germany on the same day that Charlie Chaplin broke his toe in Hollywood, I think, “Aha, not a coincidence.”

Of course, I’d be nuts if I took this into everyday life.

I was also really curious about the thing about Henrik Ibsen’s rough draft of A Doll’s House.

There wasn’t actually a rough draft that his agent forced him to revise. I made that up. But, in the play, which one is it?

A Doll’s House.

Oh, A Doll’s House, yeah, at one point the woman character does go into a frenzied Tarantella dance. I think, “Well, okay, it’s not a coincidence.” How did she happen to get exposed to one of these spiders so that she had to do that? Well, I don’t know, let’s read the play with a paranoid eye, and look for what a suppressed first draft might have consisted of without altering the actual play too much. I want it to be plausible that a first draft deviated to this little extent.

I remember you telling me that one thing that you do for setting is that you’ll drive around, and you’ll take pictures of all the places that you need to write about.

Yeah, and luckily we live just an hour from L.A., so my wife and I did drive all over the place. All of those places are accurately described. For the house that the characters are living in, Caveat, we kind of synthesized a couple of actual places for that. In fact, the way that started, right along with Cordwainer Smith and Valentino’s priest, was I read about a fandom which is people who collect “cheesecake” postcards and photos from the 1950’s. You know, women in bathing suits? And apparently among this fandom, they noticed that the background of many of their photographs was the same place, and they thought, “Well, where is this place?” And somebody said, “I recognize that mountain. This is L.A.” Evidently they were able to track down the actual site where most of these photographs had been taken in the ’50s, and there was, in the background of many of the pictures, a big wall with a spider mosaic on it. In fact, that’s probably where I got the spider idea.

I went online, and several people have managed to climb through bracken and hot fences, and find the actual ruins of this place where those photos were taken in the ’50s. Apparently, there was once a house there, built by the guy who had worked in the movie industry and collected old movie sets. When movies were finished, he would take away the walls and arches and windows from Egyptian, Medieval French, Russian, whatever the movie was, he would grab the settings and incorporate them into this big, rambling house he built.

I wasn’t able to get to that place. Well, the house is gone now, but I wasn’t able to get to the ruins of the spider wall itself, because it’s on private property, and the owner said, “No way.” Even after I promised to move it miles away. But, just as well, since I wanted to alter it for my purposes anyway.

How about the detail about all the doors from the different hotels?

That I got from a place called “The Magic Castle” in Hollywood. It’s a club of magicians, and it, like Caveat, has been assembled from a lot of torn down old hotels and houses and buildings, and in fact, in one room, they do have one wall that’s just doors that they’ve collected from older structures. When I saw that I thought, “Wow, that’s kind of neat.” A bunch of doors, each one from some different old hotel or what have you, it would be interesting after the place is closed in the middle of the night to go around and knock on the doors, see if any “come in” should sound from the other side. So yeah, I grabbed that. That was from The Magic Castle. Fascinating place altogether.

One thing that the characters in the book run into a lot is that these places have changed so much since the ’20s, and often the building isn’t there or even the whole hill isn’t there. Was that a challenge for you when writing about the ’20s?

Yeah, although there are still plenty of photographs of the missing places. In fact, for Bunker Hill, which was apparently a gorgeous place, in roughly 1900, it was where all the rich people lived and there were just elaborate mansions. Then by the 1950s, all the rich people had gone elsewhere, Beverly Hills or somewhere, and it had become just kind of run-down apartments, and junkies, and pickpockets. Raymond Chandler set a bunch of stories in Bunker Hill. Then in about 1965, Los Angeles simply tore all the houses down and scraped the whole hill off. Dumped it in the ocean somewhere. So now the whole hill is gone.

As a kid, I did, one time, in like 1959, ride the Angels Flight diagonal railway up and down with my dad. I wish I remembered it better. But luckily online—YouTube is a priceless research tool—somebody in about 1950 hung a camera outside the door of their car and just drove a grid pattern all over Bunker Hill. God knows why he did it, but it’s a priceless record. And I found that there’s a lot of old film noir movies from the ’50s that used Bunker Hill extensively, and so I watched a bunch of weird old Burt Lancaster crime movies where the plot wasn’t much, but I was real pleased to see the backgrounds. Look, there’s the house from the south. Now watch this other movie, and you get a view from the north. I wound up getting a fairly comprehensive view of those old missing parts of L.A.

I know this book isn’t out yet, but have you been getting responses to it from early readers?

Goodreads has some very polite things, and there have been a few reviews, but no, really not much yet.

But your wife reads all your books, right?

Yes, she read it. She always, very valuably, has things to say like, “I don’t understand what they’re talking about,” or, “I thought they were still in the car, but they’re in the kitchen. When did they do that?” or, “You led up to this scene like it was going to be big news, but then when the scene finally arrived, you simply walked through it. Very perfunctory.” And that’s valuable because I go fix those things.

Then my editor, Jennifer Brehl, also had a lot of questions like, “Why did this guy do this exactly?” My first thought is, “Well, it’s obvious,” and then I think, “No, if it wasn’t obvious to her, it’s not obvious, go back and make it clearer.” So yeah, readers like my wife and Jennifer Brehl are priceless, because inevitably in a book you’ve written yourself, you see all the motivations and developments very clearly because they’re in your head, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily clear in the manuscript.

Right. Given that you work so hard to make these conspiracies seem plausible, do you ever hear from people who are like, “Oh yeah, I know about the spiders, too,” or anything like that?

No, I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody say, “Yes, Powers, I see that you’re also aware of this secret.” I’d mistrust the sanity of anyone who ever told me anything like that. I know Lovecraft used to get letters from people who’d say, “Yes, Yog-Sothoth is hassling me, too. What do I do? Where do I get a Necronomicon?” But, no, I don’t think I’ve run into anybody who actually thought my conspiracy theories were real.

One thing that you told me that stuck out in my mind is that you said that you were always afraid to handle tarot cards because you were afraid of what might happen.

Yes, yes, Ouija boards, tarot cards, the I Ching, any of those things where you are supposedly getting information, that is to say, if it is not just kids games, if it is actually accomplishing something, I think, “What are you paying for it?” In fact, what’s the currency? And the answer is, “Well, I don’t know.” And I think, “Yeah, I’m not playing with that. No thanks.” I’m both entirely skeptical and scared of them. It may be relevant that I’m Catholic, so supernatural events are not entirely ruled out.

One time I was going to write a book about, sort of, The Exorcist in San Bernardino, and all my research would have been covered pretty easily because my wife was, at the time, working at the Parish office and knew how the day-to-day stuff worked, and then I got a book by Malachi Martin, which was actual transcripts of exorcisms. Dialogue between priests and devils. And I thought, “Cool, wow, boy, I’ve got all my research right here. This is great.” And I opened the book, and on the first page it says, “The author and publisher advise that anyone reading this book say the following prayer before and after each chapter.” I slammed it shut. I don’t need that. Uh-uh. I ain’t doing that.

It probably helps in writing the sort of things I write that I’m a little bit antsy about supernatural stuff. Very skeptical, but I don’t entirely rule out the whole category.

What you were just saying about the warning on the book was reminding me of the story you told about Philip K. Dick, where he would say, “I have discovered this secret . . .”

He was very good at that sort of thing. He was always, after his weird mystical experience in 1974, researching the Pre-Socratics, and the Talmud, and all kind of obscure, mystical-type stuff, and yeah, he would say, late at night over a bottle of wine, looking first nervously into the corners of the room, “My researches have led me to a discovery. I’ve found out something that only twelve people in history have known, and each of them died within twenty-four hours of learning it. I want to tell it to you.” And we’d say, “No, no, good God, no. I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.” And, of course, the next day you’d say, “Jeez, Phil, you’re still alive? I thought, knowing that thing, that you would die.” And he’d say, “Powers, you were taking me seriously? That was bunch of crap. Honestly, you’d believe anything.”

He was always very mercurial in his convictions, which leads to a lot of inaccuracies about him. People would say, “Oh, he was Episcopalian. He was an Orthodox Jew. He was gnostic.” I’d say, “Yeah, for a day. Check with him the next day, and he’d be something else.”

It must be kind of strange for you that that’s someone you know, and he’s turned into this legendary cult figure.

Yeah, it is. It’s weird to see the consensus caricature of him that emerges. This kind of crazed, drug-addled hermit writing these crazy books all alone. That wasn’t the guy I knew. The guy I knew was real sociable, funny, well read, skeptical. It must be the same with people who knew Byron or Hemingway or any other writer who kind of becomes a legend. You start to notice the legend doesn’t really resemble the actual model much.

Do you think about that when you’re writing Rudolph Valentino or people like that?

Yeah. Obviously, I’m having them do and pursue things that in real life that they didn’t do or pursue and have concerns that really weren’t ever concerns of theirs. In a way, I suppose that’s unfair, but I try not to violate what history lets me understand of their actual characters. I think I present Valentino and Nazimova accurately, as far as what sort of people they were. But I do take liberties, it’s true. And, of course, I’m working from the written history, which somebody who actually knew those people might say was distorted and inaccurate. But it’s fiction. What the hell.

I have a couple of stories that you told me years ago that I’ve been repeating ever since. I’m not sure I have all the details right, so I thought I would take this opportunity to . . .

It’s a good idea to check, yeah. [Laughter]

The first is about Philip K. Dick telling you that he had the power to forgive sins.

He called me up one morning, and I said, “Well, how’s the research going?” And he said, “Last night my researches led me to believe that I had the power to forgive sins.” I said, “Wow, that’s cool. Whose sins did you forgive?” He says, “Well, none. This morning I decided I was mistaken, and last night I called K.W. Jeter, and he got all huffy and didn’t want his sins forgiven, and so I just had to forgive the cat’s sins.”

Okay, so that’s one. And then, there’s also the story I have in my head about how you guys created the Ashbless character.

Oh yeah, Jim Blaylock and I in college in ’72, I think. The college paper printed poetry, and it was close enough to the ’60s that the poetry was all just horrible free verse about children, and flowers, and rainbows, and so we figured we could write poetry that would sound very portentous, but be, in fact, meaningless.

So, we decided to start, and I would write a line on a piece of paper and pass it to him, and he would write the next line and pass it back, and alternating we’d write out this poem. When we got to the end of the page, we would bring it to a conclusion, and we decided we were going to send this to the school paper.

We needed a name for our poet, and William was a friend of ours sitting there, and I said the last name should be one of those two word names like “Longfellow” or “Wordsworth.” Each of us came up with a syllable and the result was Ashbless, and the paper published them, and so we wrote another lot that was dumber, and they published that. So, we wrote a third lot that was dumber still, and they did not publish that.

But, ever after that, whenever Blaylock or I have needed to have some kind of crazy poet in a story, we’ve used the name William Ashbless. It puzzled Beth Meacham, then editor at Ace, when she got a manuscript from me involving somebody named William Ashlbess, and then got one from Blaylock involving somebody with the same name, and she wrote to Blaylock and said, “Do you guys know each other? What’s this William Ashbless?” And Blaylock said, “I’m sorry. Did Powers use Ashbless? I’ll change my name.” And she said, “No, no. Keep it Ashbless. Think up some way it could be the same character.” “Okay, he’s going to have to be about two hundred years old in Blaylock’s book, but okay.”

Ashbless has been with us ever since. In fact, I’ve mentioned him in every book, just as a good luck piece. I don’t want readers to keep saying, “Oh look, Powers gotta mention Ashbless. Here’s Ashbless again.” So, I’ve done it in different languages. Ceniza-Bendiga, I think, is Ashbless in Spanish. I think Asche Segnen is Ashbless in German. But, one way or another, I always sneak it in.

Right, but there is this thing where people at college wanted to meet him, and so you said that he was this deformed recluse or something like that?

Yeah, we said he was hideously deformed and couldn’t physically attend any readings or meetings, but he had given us these poems to read in his stead. At first hearing some of the poems sounded pretty good except that Blaylock and I would often break out laughing in the middle of reading them, which people thought was very insensitive of us to be laughing at the poetical efforts of our deformed friend.

Then another thing that you said, this was at Clarion, that you told us that’s always stuck in my mind, is that every time there’s a spree shooter or something, part of you always hopes that they’ll be found with a copy of a Tim Powers book because it would get you so much publicity.

I don’t recall that. You mean like Catcher in the Rye?

Yeah, like that sort of thing.

Was I sober? What year was this?

I’m not sure.

What year were you at Clarion?

’99.

’99. Yeah, I was sober then. Well, I suppose it would be publicity. I’d rather the Pope would be seen with a copy of one of my books in his back pocket, but I remember—do you remember the young lady that was kidnapped at age twelve and not discovered for eighteen years in northern California?

I don’t know her name.

I don’t remember her name, but when People Magazine took pictures of the place she had been confined in, there were a whole lot of Dean Koontz books. I wanted to tell Dean, “Hey, look, you’ve got a fan.” But, yeah, I think I’d rather have the Pope be seen with it. Or some sort of widely admired figure.

Right, right. Another piece of advice you gave us, I’m not sure if I’m remembering this right, but the way I remember it is that, as a writer, you either want to get a great job or a terrible job. Do you remember this?

I probably said you should have a terrible job. That if you want to really pursue writing as a career, it’s a handicap to have a good job with benefits and stuff and high-pay because no matter what kind of advance you got from a publisher, it would never be enough to justify quitting that solid gold job. It’s much better to have crappy part-time jobs, like at pizza parlors and be a janitor and things like that, because then if you sell a book and get an advance, it’s a cinch to quit. And, in fact, I’ve never actually had a full-time job in my life.

When I met you at Clarion, too, I didn’t realize that your novel On Stranger Tides had inspired one of my all-time favorite video games, The Secret of Monkey Island. I was curious if you had ever played that game.

No, I never have. I have, of course, heard of it, because everybody does say, “Oh yeah, it was the inspiration for Monkey Island.” And there’s some character named Threepwood, I think? It was nice of the guy who wrote Monkey Island to acknowledge that. Then, of course, Disney bought my book for the basis of the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which was fun. Which, in fact, was very nice. Especially since they could have said, “Powers, you didn’t make up Blackbeard the pirate. You didn’t make up the fountain of youth. Why should we give you any money?” It was nice that they didn’t say that.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I gather that it’s not . . . they didn’t take much from your novel for it?

No, just Blackbeard and the fountain of youth. And, you know, ships, ocean.

And the title, right?

And the title, yeah. It got the book back into print and selling well, and we got to go watch filming one evening. Briefly talked with Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz. We talked about Hunter Thompson with Johnny Depp. And then everybody was very busy, so we ran away and had dinner somewhere. My attitude toward books into movies is always, “You guys do what you want. I’m not going to hang on your elbow. I’ll go see the movie when you’re finished with it, but I don’t insist that the movie have actually anything much to do with my book.” Although I’m always in favor of if they want to do that.

Another thing that we talked about a lot at Clarion, because you and I argue about this a lot, but you were saying that you didn’t like fantasy that was kind of winking at the reader and too self-aware and things like that.

Yes, I think that’s part of what post-modernism is. I hate tongue-in-cheek, irony, self-referential, anything where the writer, in effect, says to the reader, “Well, we both know this is just made up stuff, huh? We’re both too sophisticated and hip to read for escapism and actually worry about the characters, and actually imagine that the story is really happening to real people in real places, right?” Because that’s exactly what I do want. I do want to vicariously participate and imagine that it’s all actually occurring.

Any time a writer is flippant, tongue-in-cheek, breaking the fourth wall, I get really annoyed. I think, “Goddammit. How much did I pay for this book? I paid for a performance. I didn’t pay for you to be winking at me over the top of the page.” That’s a big cause of me stopping reading books on page two. Sometimes I’ll get advanced reading copies where they say, “Would you like to write a blurb for this book?” I think, “I don’t know. Let me start it.” And, bang, as soon as there’s that sort of in-joke winking tone, I stop.

I remember a George MacDonald Fraser book, which I read because I love his Flashman books, but it was called The Pyrates, and they’re reading a magazine called like “Playrogue” or “Playknave” or something, which was a parallel for Playboy, and in a sword fight one of them says, “You can’t kill me on page four,” and I thought, “That does it. Thank you. In fact, no thank you.” Yeah, I don’t like that sort of tone in fiction. I feel very cheated.

I used to argue about this with you a lot, because back in ’99 I was in college, and I was . . .

I remember we argued about this.

I was really into that stuff, but I’ve more and more come around to your way of thinking. I don’t know if you saw the new Star Wars movie, but I totally panned it on this show for exactly that reason. I felt like every scene there was some like, “Hey, remember this scene from Star Wars? Remember this scene from Star Wars?”

I haven’t seen it, but I gather there’s a lot of that . . . not in-joke exactly, but in-reference to people who have followed the whole series, and I don’t like it in Terminator movies if Schwarzenegger says, “I’ll be back” for the second time. No, that’s just winking at us. The first time it was great, but now you’re just nudging us in the ribs saying, “Huh, huh, remember? Remember?” Which is taking me out of this immediate story at hand.

Yeah, exactly. Speaking of Clarion memories, I was just curious if you remembered anything from my year that stuck out, or just from other years.

I miss that place. I miss Michigan State University there with that river and the woods. I know Clarion East now is in San Diego, which hardly makes sense. They should call it Clarion South. It all kind of blurs into one. Who were the other people in your year?

Tobias Buckell and Tim Pratt.

Oh yeah, and I think Karen Meisner? And John Sullivan?

Yep.

Yes, I remember. I remember Toby Buckell getting criticized in the workshop sessions for being too, in a way, the sort of thing I prefer, too plain storytelling with no concerns besides action and intriguing ideas and stuff. I remember thinking, “No, that’s what I want. That’s what I like. Almost Larry Niven-ish invention.” It’s a slightly separate thing from that irony and tongue-in-cheek, but I’m always also rubbed the wrong way when I see evident themes.

When I see that the author is not simply telling me about these characters with these problems, but has a bigger purpose, is trying to make some comment about social or political issues of the day, I think, “No, don’t do that. Don’t do that.” I can read the newspaper for that. You’re taking me out of the story. You’re making the characters only representative types. I always think of Galaxy Magazine in about 1969, when all the stories were about alien empires 5,000 years in the future, but the big concerns are student unrest, and legalizing marijuana, and the Vietnam War. No, don’t do this. You want to write about those things? Write me some nonfiction, but don’t tell me about these science fictional characters and then make it clear that what they really represent is Joe McCarthy or something.

Right, that’s what’s nice about having a podcast, is I can just give people my undiluted opinions about things.

Good point.

I don’t know if people like it any more on the podcast than they would in a story, but I like it.

It’s more natural on a podcast. It’s you. It’s not you pretending to tell us about imaginary characters. I mean, I could go on about politics and stuff here myself, though I won’t. The place for that is not, I think, in fiction.

I was curious, I heard you say that Philip K. Dick included you as a character in Valis. The character is David.

Yes, Valis was largely autobiographical. The character David is based on me. The character Kevin is based on K.W. Jeter. One character was a girlfriend of a horse-loving, fat Philip K. Dick, who in the book died of cancer. In real life, she survived, and only, in fact, died last year. And everything the characters argue about and do in the book, me, and Jeter, and Phil Dick, and she actually did do until the point in the book where the savior is reincarnated, and they all go up to Northern California. At that point, the book deviates from autobiography. Until it deviates that way, it’s very closely autobiographical.

I remember reading it, and at one point he says, “David,” that is Powers, “had withdrawn into himself in some sort of catatonic way when confronted with the savior reincarnated. The Catholic Church had taught him how to do this. How to shut down his senses when confronted with something that violated Catholic orthodoxy.”

I remember telling Phil, “What the hell is that? What are you talking about here, man?” He just sort of went, “Heeheeheehee.” And at one point in the book the Phil Dick character says to the Powers character, “Would you please not tell us what C.S. Lewis would say about this? Could you do us that one favor?” And I said, “I don’t quote C.S. Lewis all the time.” And again, he sort of went, “Heeheehee.”

That’s the thing I wanted to ask you about. Were you that big of a devotee of C. S. Lewis and are you still?

Oh yeah, I love Lewis. I reread him all the time. Largely his nonfiction, though his fiction is lots of fun, too. And G.K. Chesterton. I’m still a practicing Catholic, not lapsed or recovering.

Right, because that’s fairly unusual in my experience among fantasy and science fiction writers. Like, I can think of Gene Wolfe, obviously he would be a big example of a Catholic writer, but most authors that I’ve met, fantasy and science fiction authors, are not religious particularly. I was wondering how you felt about that.

I think it’s an advantage. It gives me a different perspective, and a different perspective is a good thing to have. I’m sure there’s lots of other ways to have different perspectives too, and as I said earlier, Catholicism at least allows for supernatural stuff. I mean, you hope you never run into any, but it doesn’t rule it out. So, maybe that gives a bit more conviction to my stories.

Also, I always have a streak of contrarianism. If everybody is one thing, I’m always tempted to be the other thing. So it’s sort of fun to not be agnostic or atheist if most everybody else is.

We’re pretty much out of time, so just to wrap things up, do you want to tell us about any other projects you want to mention, or anything else you have going on?

I’ve got a novella coming out from Subterranean Press sometime this year called Down and Out in Purgatory. Though it’s not the orthodox purgatory. I’ll be curious to see how it’s received. I’m fond of it myself. Aside from that, it’s just sort of business as usual here.

And now you’re going to start reading randomly to come up with your next book?

Yeah, I’m already neck deep in it. Pursuing weird anomalies that appear to call for a supernatural explanation. It’s going to be set in L.A. again, though not connected with Medusa’s Web at all. Really, I keep on finding that Los Angeles and Hollywood just are inexhaustible wells of weird enigmatic mysteries that fit my purposes real smoothly.

I thought it was funny, I heard you say that L.A. is your favorite city. You said, “Anyone can love San Francisco, but it takes a special kind of person to love L.A.”

Yeah, San Francisco and New Orleans, you spend a day there, you fall in love with the place. They’re easy. But, you have to kind of get acquainted for a while with L.A. to see its charms. People arrive in at the airport, stay at the hotel, drive around for a couple of days, and they say, “I hate Los Angeles. What a horrible place.” Well, yeah, it was two or three days, of course you don’t like it. Go to New Orleans if you want to fall in love with a city right away. Go to Paris. Go to San Francisco. But, yeah, L.A. you’ve got to know it a little better to appreciate it.

Really looking forward to the next book you write about L.A. And I think we’re going to wrap things up there. We’ve been speaking with Tim Powers, and his new book, again, is called Medusa’s Web. Tim, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you, David. It’s been fun.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast. It is produced by John Joseph Adams and hosted by: David Barr Kirtley, who is the author of thirty short stories, which have appeared in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and Lightspeed, in books such as Armored, The Living Dead, Other Worlds Than These, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and on podcasts such as Escape Pod and Pseudopod. He lives in New York.

Author Spotlight: Mercurio D. Rivera

Jason Ridler | 966 words

What made you decide on an epistolary structure for an SF story? What’s the fun or potential of using texts/narrative to tell a story rather than the immediacy of a story in motion?

I made the story a message from Ava to her estranged mother primarily to get into Ava’s head and capture her unique voice and anger. In this way, we learn a lot about Ava by what she chooses to reveal to her mother and also how she says it. This adds some complexity, providing another layer to the storytelling. The epistolary structure allows the reader to learn not only about the preparations for the encounter with the Needlers and Ava’s difficult relationship with her daughter, Katie, but also about Ava’s complicated feelings toward the person to whom she’s telling the story. Since by its nature the epistolary format consists of more “telling” than “showing,” it certainly helps when there’s a huge backstory to tell, as in “Those Brighter Stars.”

Until you asked this question, it hadn’t occurred to me that I’ve published two other epistolary stories, “The Scent of Their Arrival” (Interzone #214) and “Dear Annabehls” (Electric Velocipede #17-18, reprinted in the Other Worlds Than These anthology). In both stories, the letters/messages serve a dual purpose: They relay the specific information communicated by the writer—and also broader information about changes to the world at large. So yes, I do enjoy playing with the format.

The quotidian and the revelatory in this story create a fun dynamic, and establish a past before the “first contact” that makes this an SF story. How important is the implied past when writing about the near future?

The quotidian details tend to provide a window into larger-scale revelations in my stories. For example, the interpersonal relationships between my characters usually serve as a microcosm for the relationship between humanity and aliens; this oftentimes involves miscommunication. In “Those Brighter Stars,” the relationship between Ava and her mother and Ava’s troubled relationship with her own daughter—these ongoing patterns of hope and abandonment—help cast the story of Earth’s encounter with the Needlers in a certain light; I believe these details create a resonance the story wouldn’t otherwise have.

You chose Ava to have ADD, and to have that challenge be an asset: a common theme in lots of science fiction. How much research on ADD did you do to make sure the portrayal was accurate and well rendered?

Actually, Ava’s ADD is a side effect of a completely science fictional condition: her acute empathy for the feelings of animals, which surpasses anything I’ve ever seen in real life—and that natural ability is then amplified through the use of surgically implanted nanites. That being said, I did do research on a number of topics to help lend an air of credibility to Ava’s condition and symptoms, including: acute empathy and the neurological manifestation of empathy; hypersensitivity; ADD; and, most notably, I read about the childhood of Temple Grandin, who’s renowned for her empathetic skills with livestock. Also, doctors initially misdiagnosed Ava with pervasive developmental disorder, so I wanted to be knowledgeable of the symptoms that might lead to that incorrect diagnosis.

The American response to the Needlers’ final arrival is militant and defensive, and the isolationist’s, too. Yet it is the European Space Agency that appears to be gauging much of the Needler’s physiology correctly. Is this based more on expressions of US foreign policy or space policy?

The fact that the military mistakes the two alien shuttlecraft for missiles and responds by attempting to launch nuclear weapons isn’t meant as a statement on US foreign policy or space policy so much as a statement on human nature. Faced with a potential existential threat, human nature is to respond with fear and violence. (Tellingly, as you note, even the isolationist in that final scene reacts violently).

I made an effort to depict a gamut of reactions to impending first contact, ranging from isolationism, to religious mania, to panic and violence, to Ava’s own hopeful outlook that the Needlers were coming to lift humanity up and nurture our development. NASA, in conjunction with the ESA, takes the more measured scientific approach and attempts communication with the Needlers by trial and error. I believe these are the types of reactions we would see if we learned tomorrow a spaceship was approaching Earth.

Ava’s empathetic ability is used to confirm something she would rather not admit to the world: The Needlers found Earth and its people of no consequence. Their view of humanity was one of indifference. Why only tell her mother? Why have her lie and say they had no emotion, rather than tell the truth?

The Needlers’ reaction is deeply disturbing to Ava—maybe even worse than if they’d displayed actual hostility—particularly given her high hopes about first contact and what it means to the future of humanity. If the Needlers had come all this way to destroy us, at least we’d have meant something to them. The fact that Ava chooses to share this devastating information with only one other person, the mother who abandoned her as a child, speaks volumes about that relationship and how badly she’s been damaged. In effect, Ava may not even realize it, but she’s asking her mother a question about her own motivations for leaving. Did I ever mean anything to you? The irony is that in Ava’s single-minded devotion to the mission, she damages her own relationship with her daughter.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jason S. Ridler is a writer, improv actor, and historian. He is the author of A Triumph for Sakura, Blood and Sawdust, the Spar Battersea thrillers and has published more than sixty stories in such magazines and anthologies as The Big Click, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Out of the Gutter, and more. He also writes the column FXXK WRITING! for Flash Fiction Online. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. He lives in Richmond, CA.

Author Spotlight: Kevin J. Anderson & Sherrilyn Kenyon

Liz Argall | 1956 words

How did you two meet each other, and given how busy you are, how do you maintain your friendship?

SK: I honestly can’t remember not knowing Kevin. I know there was a time BKJA, but I really can’t recall it. We met at a conference and to this day, he and his wife, Rebecca, are who I look for first at every event to make sure we get together to swap laughs and road stories.

KJA: Well, I can’t forget meeting Sherri. It was at DragonCon 2006, at the bar, when some friends brought Sherri to join us, an author whose career was really starting to take off. She had bright orange yarn in her hair and vampire fangs! Since then, we’ve done a lot of parallel things, with a very similar mindset in our out-of-the-box promotional efforts and full-on interactions with our fans. She’s always been there if I needed something, and I try to do the same for her. She contributed stories for my Blood Lite anthologies, and she came to me with the Dark Duets collaboration idea. Because of our travel and con schedule, we usually bump into each other a couple of times a year. As I’m writing this, she will be our guest at the WordFire booth at Houston Comicpalooza, where we are debuting her new hardcover, Born Of Legend.

What was it like to collaborate with each other? Was it different to other collaborations you’ve been part of?

KJA: We’ve both collaborated before, and each partnership is different. Both Sherri and I have manic schedules, and arranging the time was the hardest part here. I suggested the basic idea, expecting a very dark tale, and she turned it into a much more majestic idea. When I had a chance, I drafted some of the scenes, left big blanks for her, and she filled in the blanks and sent them back to me. A couple of iterations, and we were done.

You both seem to have pretty busy convention schedules; how do you manage the strains of travel, creativity and “normal life”?

SK: I’m not sure I know what “normal” is. Kevin probably has better insights on this, as he’s much more normal than I am. I take it one day at a time and try not to look too far ahead, otherwise I panic.

KJA: Normal? I just do a good job of cosplaying an author in public. My schedule gets more ridiculous every year. This year I’m doing twenty-two cons—not just as a guest, but we have a whole booth and bookstore on the show floor, with guest authors, and I’m the publisher of WordFire Press with twelve employees and releasing about five books a month . . . plus I write about four novels a year. (And much of that promotional work is Sherri’s fault, because she raised the bar for everybody.) The real key is time management and being able to focus on what you need to, on using every available minute to accomplish something that needs to be done. I do have a lot of great people working for me at WordFire, so that helps take pressure off.

One thing to remember about ”normal,” though, is that this is normal for us. My wife (bestselling author Rebecca Moesta) and I are involved in writing/publishing/promotion twenty-four/seven. It isn’t a day job; it’s life.

What’s something you’ve learned from the other?

SK: Grace and style. Kevin has the best of both in the business. He’s always professional and the most gracious author out there. I am such a klutz, while he’s completely debonair. I admire anyone who can walk across a stage to the mic and not trip.

KJA: Sherri was the first author I met who became not just a ”successful writer,” but a full-on “celebrity” (much of it through her own tireless efforts). In public, she is every bit as much of show-stopper as a TV star, and watching her transformed the way I treated my own career and interactions with fans.

What drew you to rewriting Billy Goats Gruff?

SK: I’ve always loved fairy tales and magic—especially twisting them on their ears and poor trolls have always had such a bad rep.

KJA: When I was thinking of an idea for a dark story, I thought of the cliché of homeless people living under bridges . . . and I realized, “Hmm, what else lives under bridges? Trolls!” And I had the idea of a homeless mother and child seeking shelter under a bridge inhabited by a nasty troll. At the time, I didn’t know anything about that part of Sherri’s background, and when I suggested that possibility, she ran with it.

I loved your sensitive depiction of people’s experiences of homelessness. Everyone we meet in this story is homeless. While none of the characters are necessarily human, it was more humanizing than many descriptions. How important was this kind of representation for you? What sort of research did you do?

SK: Well, I was homeless with an infant who had horrifying health issues (it was his premature birth, and subsequent issues from that, and those hospital bills that put us on the street, and yes, I had insurance, it just wasn’t enough to cover it all). I think it’s important for people to know that bad things do happen to good people and that life can throw a serious curveball at even the most cautious and “prepared” people out there. Not everyone who’s homeless is a drug-addict or in need of mental health care. Some are normal people who’ve been knocked down, and it can happen to you, too. Not all of us made bad life choices. We were responsible people who didn’t have a family to fall back on—my parents had died of cancer, which had depleted all their savings.

Unfortunately, I saw a side of humanity I wish I’d remained blissfully ignorant of, including one driver who threw a bottle at me while I was walking my baby to the doctor on the side of the road and yelled out insults. Nurses who made nasty comments about how I should get a job (I was working two of them, in addition to being a published author). It wasn’t that I didn’t have a job and wasn’t working. The jobs in backwoods Mississippi didn’t pay enough to cover living expenses.

It’s easy to misjudge others. The one thing I try to do with everything I write is open people’s eyes to those they normally ignore or dismiss. To make people aware of the “other” side of things. That someone’s circumstances may not be what you think they are or what they show to the world. If I could have one wish, it would be for people to look at one another with open hearts and minds. Most of all, to look at each other with compassion. No matter who they are.

“Trip Trap” got some mixed reviews when it first came out, and was then listed as a notable story in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. How did that feel? How do you manage reviews, and how much does recognition help insulate you from negative reviews?

KJA: I can’t help but point out the irony that the story is about trolls, although not internet trolls in this instance. The story was published in Dark Duets and led off the anthology; I think some people were expecting a grimmer, darker story, but in the end it’s an optimistic story. (And if you’re going to complain about us being hopeful and optimistic, screw you!) But other reviewers called it the best piece in the book, and it was listed as a Notable Story in the year’s best. So that’s what people need to remember about reviewers; opinions can be all over the spectrum, and you just need to find a reviewer whose tastes match your own.

I feel like sometimes the inhuman allows us to explore the intimacy of human experience in greater depth. Is that one of the things that draws you to dark fantasy? What aspects of human experience do you think are most important to explore? What aspects of human experience are you obsessed with?

SK: As I said, it’s the lack of humanity in the human psyche that haunts me. The hypocrisy. How people as a group can take something like tolerance and contort it into a new form of intolerance and conformity. The way humanity can justify any kind of evil. But what I like to believe, and what I do firmly hold to, is that in us all we do have the ability to remain honorable, no matter what has been done to us. No matter what horrors we’ve witnessed. We don’t have to surrender our souls or our compassion. My mother always said that the strongest steel is forged by the fires of hell. That which doesn’t kill us doesn’t have to make us bitter, unless we let it. Those fires show us what we can survive and clear the field for new growth. For a better harvest.

What do you think becomes of the young man, now that he is released from his burden? He’s so out of place and time, so vulnerable!

SK: Life is all about finding your place. All of us are vulnerable, and at times we all feel adrift. But somehow, we all muddle through. He’ll be fine. Like the rest of us. We just need some faith.

KJA: I think you just need to wait for the novel version that Sherri and I should write. In our spare time.

What other projects would you like to tell us about?

SK: My latest is my League: Nemesis Rising novel, Born of Legend, which is about a misjudged hero. And my next Dark-Hunter novel comes out in August, Dragonmark, which picks up where Dragonbane left off, with the demons trying to take over the world, and my dragon brothers trying to stop them and save the life of their brother who is guarding one of the most sacred objects of the ancient world. Then next year, Tor will launch my Dark-Hunter: Deadman’s Cross pirate spin-off trilogy. Demons. Pirates. Druids. Secrets. Fun stuff!

KJA: And I have a pretty eventful September. Tor Books will release Navigators Of Dune, by me and Brian Herbert, the last book we currently have planned in the Dune series, and Eternity’s Mind, the grand finale of my Saga of Shadows trilogy, which also wraps up my extensive Saga of Seven Suns series. I’ve spent eighteen years working with Brian on Dune and fifteen years working on Seven Suns, so this is really like the “end of the universes” for me. Of course, I have half a dozen other projects in the works, too, as well as publishing, conventions, teaching . . . cooking, mountain climbing, and riding the roller coaster.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Liz Argall’s short stories can be found in places like Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and This is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death. She creates the webcomic Things Without Arms and Without Legs and writes love songs to inanimate objects. Her previous incarnations include circus manager, refuge worker, artists’ model, research officer for the Order of Australia Awards, farm girl, and extensive work in the not–for–profit sector.

Author Spotlight: Kameron Hurley

Laurel Amberdine | 866 words

This story starts out bleak, and only gets bleaker, until the ending where we learn that this is a simulation of a historical event, one that ultimately saved this world. Did you know when you started writing that this was a simulation? What was behind that choice?

I had no idea until I got to the end. I’ve written a lot of bleak stories in my time, and when I got to the end of this one, and Yousra kills herself and I wrote that last sentence in her section, that was the original ending. And I just looked at that and went “So what?” Like, we went through all this war and horror and she makes this sacrifice, but who is served by it? Who is saved? Does it matter at all to the world?

I think it was the author Damon Knight who was famous for writing “So what?” at the end of a story if there was no emotional payoff. And that’s exactly what I thought of when I finished the story with Yousra dying. The reader needed to know that this wasn’t for nothing. They needed to know that the world went on, and was better, because of that sacrifice. So I went back and looked at what I’d put in there. I remembered the rooms full of bodies that I’d had her ransack. And I thought, okay, what if these people were programmed to wake up thousands of years after the coming of the invaders in the hopes of outlasting them? What if they wake up long after Yousra is dead? Their ship would still be alive, so they could record this, right? I often put a lot of stuff into the front of my stories, many little elements, in the hopes that my brain will connect them in the end. In this case, that’s exactly what happened. I had all the elements I needed, I just needed to link them.

I’ve noticed that colonialism is a theme in much of your work—and certainly central to this story. Has this been an interest of yours for long? Do you recall how it started?

This story has been bubbling around in my head since 2006 or so, I think. But it wasn’t until late last year that I realized it was a story about colonialism. It was in realizing that that I actually got stuck again, though, because the idea intimidated me. What did I have to say about colonialism and civilization? It wasn’t until I realized that I wanted to play with the idea of how we define “civilized” and “civilization” that it all came together. The ways that various cultures define civilization and humanity have always interested me. What if, for these people, the definition of civilization was people who could commit terrible atrocities? What if they believed that goading a people into destroying itself was actually helping them become more civilized? Looking out at the history of colonialism here in the U.S., that definition isn’t that far from the mindset of many European colonizers.

Is “War of Heroes” at all related to any of your other fictional settings, or are you planning to write further in this world?

This is a stand-alone world. For the time being, I don’t see anything else being set here. It served its purpose for this particular story.

This story was first released to Patreon donors. How do you decide what to write for them? Do you use an editor or beta-readers before sending it out?

I pretty much write what I want for the Patreon backers. One of the reasons I love writing with patron backing is because it frees me up to write exactly what I want. I don’t feel pressure to write for a market. This has allowed me to explore many different types of writing that I wouldn’t have tried otherwise. I generally don’t use any editors or beta readers anymore, though for this story my agent did ask if I wanted a quick read beforehand, and I took her up on it. She had some good feedback for tightening the plot a bit and clarifying a few things, so I made those edits before it went live. I tend to write stories and novels so close to deadline right now that there’s no reasonable amount of time left to hand it off to beta readers and get feedback. I was lucky with this one in that my agent had some downtime and reads very fast.

Where should fans look for your work next?

My essay collection, The Geek Feminist Revolution, is out now. On January 10th, my next novel, The Stars Are Legion, will be out. It’s an all-women space opera about two families battling it out for control of a Legion of starships. Review copies have already gone out, and I’m getting some great responses so far. Looking forward to seeing it on the shelves come January.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in San Francisco where she writes science fiction and fantasy and works for Locus Magazine. Her YA fantasy novel Luminator is forthcoming from Reuts Publishing in 2017. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Adam-Troy Castro

Jude Griffin | 722 words

How did “The Assassin’s Secret” come about?

I’m afraid that all replies to questions of this sort will be boring, today. This was just a story. I began writing it with no real idea of where it was headed or what it was about, accumulating detail in the way that is only possible in stories that take the form this one does, plotless descriptions of a status quo. Every discovery the reader makes along the way is one I made along the way. I wouldn’t want every story-writing experience to be like this one, as planning and foreseen direction also have a place, but, by God, I would be poorer if I could not have the fun of occasionally wandering down such blind paths.

So many delightful send-ups of tropes and clichés: Have you been collecting these along the way or did they all flood back to you once you started writing?

If you have spent any time stumbling around this subgenre as a reader, you have internalized this stuff, and it will bubble up at the oddest moments.

Do you have any favorite examples of similar send-ups of cultural/literary touchstones?

At this point in literary history, almost every subgenre exists in two forms: the purest one, which is just one stage removed from real life, and the one based on prior iterations that is just love for the genre, feeding back on itself. Thus, we have crime fiction that really is based on the culture of illegality and human corruption, and crime fiction that just boils the tropes and gives us stuff like the cop on the edge, the loveable gangsters, and—most notably in this context, since the real things probably doesn’t exist—the wealthy international assassin for hire, who gets fresh contracts on a regular basis. (Even Forsyth’s Jackal, relatively realistic as the book and first movie were played, is likely fantasy.) The most prominent example of a trope gone self-contained is the subgenre spawned by the James Bond movies (and I do mean the movies), of impossibly dashing “spies” who are really more like superheroes, battling madmen and their globe-spanning conspiracies. It’s kind of startling to be reminded that they exist in the same genre as the works of John le Carré.

If we’re talking about assassins in particular, I can point you to any number of grand examples, but two under-appreciated motion pictures that manage a degree of emotional realism while bringing us into the lives of professional assassins are Panic (2000) with William H. Macy, and The Matador (2005) with Pierce Brosnan.

Did you have in mind an actual motivation for the mysterious woman who comes and leaves without a request?

Not at all. See, here’s the trick. One way to make a story resonate, to foster the useful illusion that its world is larger than the details included in the text, is to include some compelling questions that cannot possibly be answered. A prior Lightspeed story of mine, “The Thing About Shapes to Come,” leads up a long-belated conversation between mother and daughter, but refuses to tell you what got said between them; the specifics are left to the reader’s imagination, and even I, the author, do not pretend to have a definitive answer. Here, I deliberately leave the woman’s backstory, and her reticence, unresolved. Why does she change her mind? It is left as an exercise to the reader. If I had to come up with something here, it would be a guess, and that guess would be that it is possible to have every possible motive for murder, and to still decide that the karmic price is more than anyone should want to pay.

Any news or projects you want to tell us about?

The contracted novel in progress is alas still not ready to be announced, but the month this story sees print is also the month you can find the grand finale of my Gustav Gloom series, Gustav Gloom And The Castle Of Fear, in stores. See Gustav face to face with the evil Lord Obsidian! See everybody, good and bad, get what they deserve.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.

Author Spotlight: Jeremiah Tolbert

Sandra Odell | 1337 words

The first two pages of “Taste The Singularity At The Food Truck Circus” is, pardon the pun, a literal feast for the senses: muggy heat; AR work swiped from in front of the eyes; “that glossy-tongued hint of fry grease.” Tell us about what inspired this story.

I have a fascination with and love of food (especially street food), and that love informs this story quite a bit. I love the fact that on the streets of many cities, I can buy something that looks like a dumpster fire wrapped in wax paper and have it taste like heaven. I love the inventiveness that comes from having to be fleet of foot and cook in tiny spaces.

The River Market in this story is a real place in Kansas City, Missouri, just down the road from where I live. Too far to go to every Saturday, but close enough that I go one to two times a year. It’s one of my favorite places anywhere. I’ve changed it up a bit, in the future, envisioning an expansion that hasn’t taken place yet, but the basics are there today. And they’re amazing. I wish I could live there.

Lately, one of my driving goals with my writing is to envision the future of the places where I live. I feel like giant cities like New York are well enough represented in science fiction. For years, I struggled to write speculative fiction set in places I only knew through my own media consumption. I longed to see more stories set in the places I knew as a child growing up in Kansas. So I write stories in my own geographic locations now for the folks out there who feel like they’re not well represented geographically. It’s nothing on the level of the representation issues we as a field struggle with in regards to issues of race, gender, and sexuality, though.

In one of those funny “the real world gets ahead of your story” moments, downtown Kansas City now has streetcars, but did not at the time I first wrote this story. Luckily, no climate refugees yet, but I’m almost certain that they’re coming in the next twenty years.

You capture the bustle and energy of the urban market setting quite well, both in terms of the variety of offerings and the diverse crowd. How much of Jeremiah Tolbert ended up on the page? Do you enjoy open-air markets? Are you a people watcher?

A lot of me ends up on the page, distributed between different characters. I think I waffle back and forth between being a Nico type and an Alberto type. Nico’s more cautious and slow to embrace what he wants, where Alberto never questions what he wants and throws caution to the wind, even if caution might be prudent. But they both share my passion for interesting food experiences.

I am absolutely a people watcher, and one of the best places to do it is open-air markets. I find that crowds make people a bit grumpy, unless the crowd has gathered around food. Then the celebratory atmosphere overwhelms the anxiety of being pressed in shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. You don’t see a lot of frowning people at an open-air market unless the food’s run out. I love that atmosphere and I wish we felt like that more often.

While the story could be classified as near-future science fiction, there is a distinct “down the rabbit hole” sense of the fantastic that carries it along, particularly during the FDA raid on the Circus, and the delightful “EAT ME” pigeon. Many writers are not comfortable blending genres, or even genre influences. When writing, have you ever felt constrained by the definitions of genre?

There’s definitely a touch of gonzo to the story, but I’m okay with calling it science fiction and not fantasy. I leave actually figuring out how animated marzipan pigeon would work to the real mad food scientists out there. I think we often get too focused on writing believable things, plausible things. That’s good, for sure, but if we do only write about what’s currently plausible, who’s going to write the impossible things that inspire makers? Science fiction has a rich tradition of inspiring scientists with the impossible: see all of Star Trek. So I think this story is mostly meant to be in that vein. Maybe if I’m lucky, some idea in there will be a spark of something impossible made possible by the culinary types of the world. All I ask is if someone ever creates a real-world Kaiju Experience, I be first in line to try it!

Sometimes, I just have to throw plausibility out the window and chase a wilder passion and energy. This was definitely one of those times for me. I don’t often feel constrained by definitions of genre—genre isn’t a writing question so much as one of market for me. Which is to say: I often leave genre up to the editor.

“Taste The Singularity At The Food Truck Circus” addresses issues of cultural differences through cuisine, opportunities, and the press of refugees from a near-future climate change, yet you take great care to flesh out the characters. These are people walking the cutting edge of technology and culture, not stereotypes; personification, not representation. What do you feel could be done to further encourage writers to both tell their own stories, and to respect and support the stories of others?

Thank you for saying so! It means a lot that the story comes across that way. I think the key word is respect. Practice respect and empathy for others in everyday life and I think it comes through in the fiction.

To encourage writers to tell their own stories, I would say this: Our own stories are often where we shine the brightest. “Write what you know” is a cliché, but it’s one that has stuck around for a reason. When you invest a bit of yourself in your work, it builds real connections between you and the reader. It’s a form of honesty and authenticity; a savory treat we’re all seeking in what we read.

Many of your stories are written with an optimistic, open sense of wonder. Even when circumstances are at their most dire, when the ending is not always “happy,” there is often a sense that things will turn out okay. Not always neat and clean, but okay. You’ve said that you love man’s capacity to constantly surprise you with new technology. Why is that?

I guess my stories reflect my reality there. In general, life turns out okay. This isn’t bad or good; it just is. We all have dreams we don’t get to live, but also, we have worst nightmares that never come true also. There’s an awful lot of room in the middle for a good life. That’s what most of us get, and we can still be remarkable and extraordinary, even if we don’t save the world, get the love interest, and become millionaires. I strive to tell extraordinary tales about ordinary people.

I love humanity’s capacity to surprise me with technology primarily because I’m a neophile. I crave and seek out new things and experiences (whether in technology or food or whatever). Technology, for the most part, also makes our lives better. It can definitely make things worse, but so many of us wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for technological innovation over the last century. Bad uses of technology can make me grumpy, too; it’s just that, when taken as a whole, it surprises and delights me. Just like food.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have pineapple-flavored tamales calling my name!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: Delia Sherman

Jude Griffin | 604 words

How did “The Red Piano” come about?

I overheard Ellen Datlow talking about an Edgar Allan Poe tribute anthology at (I think) a NYRSF reading here in New York. I’ve been in a lot of her anthologies, but always the fantasy anthologies she edited with Terri Windling, never the horror anthologies, because I don’t do horror. And yet, I loved (for a given value of “love”) Poe as a child, and was fascinated by certain aspects of his tales as an adult. So I asked if I could submit a story to her, and she (bless her) said yes.

The rich, gothic language choices: Were you reading works of similar style while writing or does the language come to you once you’ve chosen the story style and setting?

Language doesn’t come to me. I choose it, carefully, to reflect the kind of story I’m writing. I went to a very old-fashioned school, back in the day, where we were taught to write by copying models of classical prose. Somewhere in my papers are my Addison and Steele essay, my Francis Bacon essay, my A.A. Milne story, my E.R. Edison story, and others I have thankfully forgotten. From time to time, when it’s appropriate, I still do this—although I try and put enough of a twist on my homage to make it mine.

The paragraph introducing Roderick is almost over-the-top in its delightful camp: The whole story turned for me at that moment from a straightforward ghost story to one paying a loving, if not gently teasing, homage, to gothic romance. Was that deliberate?

The impetus of this story, for me, was to take the Poeian model of a doomed family, a beautiful but accursed woman, an oblivious hero, and a horrific fate, and do a little gender-flipping. When one focuses entirely on the beauty and doomed, mysterious nature of a character (as the classic gothic writers did with women), one tends to create objectified and highly colored portraits. “Hyacinthine locks,” by the way, is a favorite Poe descriptor for male hair. Think of a hyacinth’s myriad little up-curving petals—like that. Only not purple. Unlike the prose.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know about this story?

I had a blast writing it. I am very fond of Dr. Arantxa Waters, who I modeled on the stereotype of the dedicated, monkish professor (male). This allowed me to make Roderick do all the emotional heavy lifting in the story, which was also fun. As was the final scene, which may be pretty tame as modern horror goes, but did scare me while I was writing it.

Any news or projects you want to tell us about?

This is a big year for me. If you like historical ventriloquism (historical fiction, that is, not puppets sitting on comics’ knees), you should know about Whitehall, the Serial Box serial I’m writing with Mary Robinette Kowal, Madeleine Robins, Barbara Samuel, Sarah Smith, and Liz Duffy Adams. It’s about Charles II, his wife Catherine of Braganza, and Barbara, Lady Castlemaine, his mistress, and it’s just full of all kinds of seventeenth-century intrigues and shenanigans, plus some very luscious poetry. I’m also working on a clockwork-punk novel I like to think of as Dickens meets Conan Doyle, with occasional excursions into China Miéville territory. And my middle grade fantasy The Evil Wizard Smallbone is coming out in September.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.

Author Spotlight: Maureen F. McHugh

Robyn Lupo | 583 words

Poignant and genre-straddling, “Laika Comes Back Safe” is a heartbreaker of a story. Can you tell us a little about what started it for you? Were there any surprises along the way?

 I can’t wait for inspiration or I’ll never write. I tend to sit down and think, “Gotta write something.” A lot of my stories come from smashing a couple of things together and this one was “let’s smash together werewolves and Kentucky.” Because, really, not something I associated with werewolves. I got the idea of Tye confessing that he’s a werewolf and the story went from there.

I have family from rural Kentucky. My mother grew up in a hollow (pronounced “holler”) called Swan Pond. I started the story thinking about growing up there, about the circumstances of family. Nothing in the story is autobiographical except the family cemetery, but it all feels deeply personal.

I get asked a lot if Tye really is a werewolf and my answer is that Tye is Schrödinger’s werewolf. I don’t really want to open the box.

In Canada right now, there’s attention being drawn to mental health crises affecting adolescents, particularly indigenous teens, and yet the situation in 2016 is that too many vulnerable people don’t get to the resources they need to survive. Tye’s story is realistic, and that is tragic. How do you hope to see fiction fitting into this conversation, if at all?

 I was pretty depressed as a teen. I didn’t get any help until I was in my early thirties. I’m seeing some evidence that that is changing, but honestly, people in poverty don’t get attention for chronic problems, it doesn’t matter if they’re poor white trash (like part of my family) or First Nations. When I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I was very active in the pursuit of good health, to the point where my oncologist provided me with medical paper abstracts. (He was a great oncologist.) But when I’m mentally ill, part of the problem is my brain doesn’t work right and I can’t really fight for myself. When you’re poor, you make desperate decisions. You tell yourself that that knocking you hear in the car engine isn’t really a problem because you really can’t afford it if it is. You take out payday loans. It’s very hard when things go wrong to believe that they will get better, because you don’t have a lot of evidence that things will get better.

Fiction rarely has much effect on the world (with the exception of something like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which helped push the US into Civil War.) But fiction can, on an individual basis, give people a chance to experience things they aren’t familiar with. To empathize. I don’t expect my story to have much of a conversation with the world. It’s a very small story in a very big world, and it’s mostly talking to people who already sympathize. But it’s better than silence. It’s an attempt at a truthful depiction of people whether there are werewolves in it or not.

What is next for you, Maureen McHugh?

I’m at work on a novel! I’m about halfway through. No deadline yet, so I can’t say when it will be done.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Robyn Lupo lives in Southwestern Ontario with her not-that-kind-of-doctor partner and three cats. She enjoys tiny things, and has wrangled flash for Women Destroy Science Fiction! as well as selected poetry for Queers Destroy Horror! She aspires to one day write many things.

Author Spotlight: Tristina Wright

Sandra Odell | 1058 words

“The Siren Son” opens with a line that immediately drew me in and it only got better from there. I loved the narrative voice describing the historical text, and how you lay the foundation for not only the plot, but also address issues of race and representation. Tell us about the inspiration behind Neal’s and Killian’s story.

I’ve always loved exploring the ideas behind what makes a monster a monster, and attraction from opposite sides of a divide, be it class, ideology, race, etc. With Neal and Killian, that first line sprang into my head, and I knew Neal was someone special—someone small who found himself in the middle of something much bigger than himself. And I knew I wanted to wrap him up in dragons and sirens mixed with the desperation of passion and wanting to be more. Neal looks at the stars and sees a hopeful future. Killian looks at Neal the same way.

And I’m a sucker for a good love story.

This is an intimate story, one filled with little details, sliding into legend and myth rather than focusing solely on the broad strokes of history. What is it about telling smaller, personal stories that appeals to you as a writer?

The ability to relate to certain narratives. To find ourselves in the thoughts and actions of a specific character or moment. Broad and sweeping is wonderful, but it tends to be more cinematic. When you watch Lord of the Rings, you get goosebumps and awe at the epic battle scenes, but it’s Frodo who makes you cry, who scrapes your heart against a cheese grater. I love the tight focus in the midst of something huge and world-encompassing, because it would be easy to write a story about the dragons destroying everything. It would be big and epic and filled with CGI and camera tricks. But, instead, zooming in on two people and asking, “What about you?” is where my stories go. I want to know about the boys kissing in the shadows of an alley while the world burns around them.

You have never shied from exploring the nature of difference and self in your fiction. Through the course of “The Siren Son,” we learn of both Neal’s and Killian’s mixed heritage. Each is attracted to the other, a budding same-sex relationship. As both a writer and someone who identifies as bisexual, why do you feel representation in fiction is important? What do you feel could be done in the publishing industry to encourage and support representation, no matter the sort?

Everyone deserves to see themselves in fiction and, not only that, everyone deserves to be the hero. When I was younger and confused and trying to figure out why I had a crush on a few guys in my class and my best friend (do I want to be her or kiss her?), a book with someone who IDed as bisexual would’ve been so incredibly helpful for me. It might’ve saved me years of confusion and self-loathing and questions.

Literature has (and continues to be) very white, straight, cisgender, abled, and more often than not, male and Christian-based. It’s been that way so long that we think of those as The Default Setting, and anything not that is The Other. It shouldn’t be that way. There shouldn’t be a default. There should be a spectrum of characters. There should be intersections upon intersections. There should never be the phrase “too much diversity” in a review. I honestly believe the more accurate and respectful representation we have in books—especially books for younger readers—the better off we are as a society.

At the beginning of 2016, Lee and Low released the results of their diversity study in publishing (bit.ly/1Tm9bad).The results were shocking and yet weren’t, all at the same time. In order for publishing to encourage and support accurate representation, they need better representation in their employees. We need agents, editors, marketing managers, interns, publicists of color/not straight/not abled/not cis/etc. We need more mirrors and we need to encourage far more mirrors through campaigns like #ownvoices.

You blend science fiction and fantasy in a manner reminiscent of Anne McCafferey’s Pern books, the science of the past becoming the magic of the present. Many booksellers rely heavily on genre labels to attract customers. On your website, you describe the genres of your writing as “Right now, Young Adult science fiction and fantasy.” Do any other genres call to you?

For now? Just science fiction and fantasy. I love how big it can be. I love the hope it represents. I love that I can create a world where it’s no big deal to be gay or bi or trans. It’s such a sandbox and you can do so much and give people escapes from the stress of their lives. Anyone can be anything in SFF, and that’s so incredibly beautiful to me. It’s what I grew up reading and watching and playing. It’ll always be home for me.

If you could send a message in a bottle back to a younger Tristina, what would you say?

Stop brushing your hair when it’s dry—you’re killing your curls.

Buy stock in Google.

Don’t listen to that professor when he tells you that you can’t write a book. He’s a bitter old man and he’s flat-out wrong.

Okay, I have to know. How do you make a grilled peanut butter and honey without everything melting and oozing out the sides?

You grill a peanut butter sandwich exactly like you would a grilled cheese! Then you drizzle honey (a lot of honey—do not skimp on the honey) over the top when you serve it. My aunt used to make them every day after school for all the cousins. It’s my absolute favorite comfort food. Speaking of, I’m going to go make one now . . .

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: C.S.E. Cooney

Moshe Siegel | 2451 words

Your novella, “The Bone Swans of Amandale,” was first published in the aptly named 2015 collection Bone Swans. Can you give us a peek at that book’s genesis? And, perhaps more importantly, does Maurice the Incomparable have any more tales (as it were) within?!

Once upon the time, I was attempting to teach myself how to be a responsible twenty-first-century writer. I.e., How To Navigate the White Water Rapids of Self-Publishing on Amazon.

Rights to my novella “The Big Bah-Ha” had reverted back to me after the small press that originally published it folded, so I trotted over to Mike Allen and asked for some advice on editing and presentation. He counter-offered with, “How about we put together a whole collection and I publish it through Mythic Delirium,” and I said, “Let-me-think-about-this-for-a-second-yes.”

I chose four previously published pieces that I was still fond of (more goofy grin-inducing than Oedipal-eyeball out-poking, unlike other early work), and which had some positive response from readers, and presented them to Mike as options. He asked if I had an unpublished story to set as a centerpiece.

“I do, in fact!” But then warned him, “But I, uh, only have a first draft—and it’s a 25,000 word monster. YOU LIKE MONSTERS, RIGHT, MIKE ALLEN?”

Mike Allen likes monsters.

So this is how “The Bone Swans of Amandale” happened.

In a different time, in a different place, in a kingdom called Manhattan where the fairies dwell, I stood in the formal sitting parlor of a flat in Riverside, flipping through an edition of The Pied Piper illustrated by Mercer Mayer. The flat belonged to two Fairy Queens named Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, who once inexplicably said unto me, “Come over here, dear. We feel very aunt-ly toward you and wish to shower you with fairy gifts, like standing in our parlor and reading The Pied Piper while waiting for the rest of our writers group to gather.”

Lo, another Fairy Queen by the name of Doctor Theodora Goss attended this soirée. As I flipped through The Pied Piper, she stared with lake-colored eyes out onto the darkening park. Sighing like a Swan Princess, she lamented, “O! If only someone would name a rose after me, such fairy blessings and scented blossoms would I rain upon their worthy heads!”

A Mercer Mayer rat winked up at me from the page.

Thus was born Dora Rose the Swan Princess, Maurice the Incomparable, and Beautiful Nicolas. One of those beautiful collisions.

You asked if there are more Maurice tales in my collection Bone Swans? The answer, alas, is no.

But there are more tales that take place in Amandale. For instance, I have a novella entitled “The Witch in the Almond Tree” that takes place in that very town, only much earlier in its timeline. (This too is a twisted retelling of a certain fairy tale, but with naughty bits).

Furthermore, there will be at least two more stories set within and around the Hill where the Pied Piper dwells, and where within lives the lie that is the realm of Faerie.

I’ve two stories in mind that continue with the characters of “The Bone Swans of Amandale.” These are “Nicolas and the Oracles” and “Silver and Bone.”

The first would be a string of episodic adventures starring the Pied Piper, Froggit, Possum, and Greenpea—as they make their way as musicians in Faerie beneath the Hill, meeting giants, outwitting monsters, playing for the King of the Glass Mountain, rescuing prisoners, plying their craft, getting into scrapes.

They’ll age one year for every ten that passes in Faerie, and every year they come back to the human world to visit their old friends Dora Rose and Maurice the Incomparable. After one hundred years pass under the Hill, they shall emerge, no longer children but young men and women with decisions to make. Shall they continue as they’ve been, dwelling in the perilous Land of Dreams, or shall they try something new—like living out their mortal lives in an Amandale that has long since forgotten them?

“Silver and Bone” will be something very special. It is the final confrontation between Nicolas and the Faerie Queen, that merciless, monstrous, gorgeous entity who has haunted and hunted him since millennia uncounted. Ancient spells must be undone. New songs must be sung. But who can mend the vessel that is Nicolas, so long ago broken, and broken and broken, over and again?

I know the answer. But I must wait to whisper it to you. BECAUSE I HAVE OTHER PROJECTS MEANWHILE!

While this story includes components and characters from familiar fairytales, “Bone Swans” is no mere retelling. Did you have any trouble deciding which folklore elements, among all the many, ghastly options, would best work for the story you wanted to tell? Or was the writing process more instinct than scheme?

Fairy tales can be so simple. Here is a thing that happened, and this is what followed.

A woman wants a child. She bargains for a child. She dies bearing that child. The father remarries. The new wife hates the child. The new wife kills the child and cooks it. The father eats the child. The sister buries the bones. The bones turn into a bird. The bird takes vengeance on the mother, and rewards the faithful.

That is a very simple story. The original is perhaps slightly more elaborate, but not by very much. Yet, the very core of that story haunts me: Grown-up finds child irritating or alien, grown-up beheads child with lid of chest. It’s awful. But unlike bargains with trees and birds dropping millstones on people’s heads—it’s frighteningly believable.

It’s not just fairy tales. Grown-ups hurting children haunts me in myth (Medea), in history (the Princes in the Tower), and in the media (pick a headline—several come immediately to mind).

What else haunted me? That last child whom the Pied Piper left behind in Robert Browning’s poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” The one against whom the mountainside shut fast.

The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!

Now, maybe that child was the only child spared from death. Or maybe that child was the only child promised paradise and then shut out. Who can say? But I always wanted more for that kid—the last one left in Hamelin.

So I multiplied him by three, and gave them all names.

I think what happens is that certain elements of certain stories upset me, and I want to kick them.

Music—be it from a silver flute or the deformed, orchestral corpse of a swan person—is a central topic in this story. Do you play, or sing? Or are you, like Maurice, simply an appreciator?

I do sing! I took voice lessons on and off through my teens and twenties, and come from a family of actual instrument-playing musicians, too—though I am not one of them.

Last year, in fact, I crowdfunded my first album on Indiegogo. I’d had this weird dream about an imaginary rock star named Brimstone Rhine—and in the dream her upcoming EP was to be called The Headless Bride. When I woke up, I was so impressed with my subconscious (and bored at my then-job) that I wrote all the lyrics for the album—actually just an EP—for fun.

A few months later, I wrote the lyrics for another EP called Alecto! Alecto!

A few months after that, I’d convinced myself that maybe those lyrics would be happier out in the world. You know. Doing their work. Sort of Ceta-eeling their way into the subconscious of the innocent listener . . .

But how, I asked myself, does one go about hiring musical collaborators? I had scratch melodies in my head, but no way of preserving them, other than in wobbly a cappella on GarageBand.

My conclusion? I am a poor artist. Musicians are often poor artists, too. I like to be paid. MUSICIANS MUST LIKE TO BE PAID, TOO. Maybe if I offered musicians MONEY, they would help me!

One problem: I didn’t have any money—but! I’d been watching monumental crowdfunding efforts for various worthy projects blossom around me on Facebook, and figured I’d like to give it a shot.

So I put together this campaign (indiegogo.com/projects/brimstone-rhine#), which resulted in these two EPs (brimstonerhine.bandcamp.com). They’re not perfect, but I’m pretty proud of them as a first-time effort. I learned a lot! And now I have music out there in the world. And that’s not nothing. That’s something indeed. Go forth, my little Ceti eels! Go forth and EAR-WORM!

I also sometimes sing and perform with speculative writers/poets/editors Amal El-Mohtar (amalelmohtar.com) and Caitlyn Paxson (caitlynpaxson.com) in a group called The Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours (bactroubadours.com).

We have vague plans of one day compiling all our Nineteenth-Century-American-Miners-Abducted-By-Aliens-And-Sent-To-Far-Off-Planet songs into an album called Ballads from a Distant Star. Here we are on YouTube singing one of those very ballads, “Sisters Lionheart,” (youtube.com/watch?v=eQUMjlxhisw) at a place called The Mercury Lounge in Ottawa. These songs are strongly influenced by fairy tales, folk ballad, and alien abduction stories. Which are a lot like fairy abduction stories, when you come to think of it. (We thought of it, anyway.)

So, yeah. Yup. Yeppers. I guess I’m a little more musical than Maurice. But maybe, like Maurice, I’m a little less musical than I actually think I am!

Your poet’s sense of lyricism leaks—gloriously—into your prose. I have never been so moved by the musings of a salacious rat-man. As a poet as well as a prose author, do you feel that you cross a boundary, or enter a different headspace, when approaching either style of craft? Does the act of drafting either form affect you in a different manner?

I actually think I have a problem with curlicues. I often get so scandalously elaborate and enthusiastically lyrical as to be well-nigh unreadable.

And then I want to cut all my words away with an X-Acto knife so that my prose will be nice and delicious and bare and pithy and all those things it would be if I didn’t like adjectives QUITE so much, not to mention rhyme and rhythm and my particular hamartia . . . ALLITERATION!

So this is a balance beam I walk. I like to tell a story cleanly, and then I just get carried away. Poetry is not prose. I want to pack a wallop, not lull someone to sleep with excessive lyricism. And yet—sometimes plot is character, and sometimes character is voice, and sometimes the voice belongs to a lascivious rat who likes to go on rhapsodic rants—AND WHO AM I TO STOP HIM? I’m just the writer!

I always write multiple drafts. I tend to overwrite, then cut back, then re-plump. (Just one more gilded cherub, pretty please? If I promise to make him bleed by page fifteen?) I try to keep only what is necessary. Even then, my prose tends to be more Fabergé egg than hardboiled.

Children are no more spared cruelty in this novella than they are in the gruesome fairytales of yore—and the kiddos of “Bone Swans” are no less up for a grim challenge than were their blood-spattered, toddling predecessors. What do you make of the modern interpretation of acceptable children’s fare, wherein very few—if any!—kids are fed alive to anything?

Gosh, I think kids like to read things about being eaten alive. I mean, they’re little ghouls. They’re fascinated by things that frighten them.

Adults are more sensitive—and I guess they have every right to be, since they’re the ones summoned in the middle of the night when their kid has one of those delicious and nutritious nightmares that makes childhood so exciting and nighttimes so endless and vast.

I remember that Neil Gaiman, around the time he wrote Coraline, said something like, “Kids are pretty sure a story will turn out all right in the end; adults know better.” (#neilgaimansaiditbetter)

That said, I’m not writing for kids. But if they want to read my particular fairy tales, MORE POWER TO YA, LITTLE BUDDIES! Start them off with “The Big Bah-Ha.” Lots of kids in that one. And clowns. Dead ones.

Do you have any projects upcoming or in the works that you would like to share with us?

I just finished a novel, Miscellaneous Stones: Necromancer!!! It’s about a girl who grows up in a family of assassins, but she’s allergic to violence. This allergy is an early indication of death magic—if she survives childhood, she’ll grow up so repelled by death, she’ll be able to raise the dead. Shenanigans ensue.

It’s is the first of a trilogy, so that’s exciting. Lately the second book has been chattering at me. The outline is filling in, doubling in size, deepening.

But before I attack it, I want to write the third installment of my Dark Breakers novella trilogy, called “Desdemona and the Deep.” The second in that series, “The Two Paupers” will appear in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy—which is very exciting. I’d love to have this one finished and out in the world by the time that anthology comes out.

I’ve also a few other short stories/novellas projects in mind—including the aforementioned “Nicolas and the Oracles” and “Silver and Bone.” This big behemoth of a novella called “The Twice-Drowned Saint” that takes place in a country peripheral to the one in which “Life on the Sun” is set. (That’s the first story in Bone Swans.)

And I’m working on another album for the imaginary rock star Brimstone Rhine called Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir.

And Carlos Hernandez and I have this idea in mind for a goofy superhero satirical serialized radio play. We had a great time collaborating on our short story “The Book of May” (Clockwork Phoenix 5, Mythic Delirium), and the idea of doing something in a new medium makes us a bit giddy.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Moshe Siegel interviews at Lightspeed, works in the New York State library system, and hatches indie publishing plots from his Hudson Valley home office. Follow tweets of varying relevance @moshesiegel.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 138 words

Coming up in September, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Sean Williams (“The Lives of Riley”) and An Owomoyela (“Unauthorized Access”), along with SF reprints by Charlie Jane Anders (“Power Couple, or Love Never Sleeps”) and Alec Nevala-Lee (“Ernesto”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Maria Dahvana Headley (“See the Unseeable, Know the Unknowable”) and Jaymee Goh (“Crocodile Tears”), and fantasy reprints by Tim Pratt (“The Wilderness Within”) and Christopher Barzak (“What We Know About the Lost Families of——House”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns.

For our ebook readers, we also have a reprint of the novella “Horn,” by Peter M. Ball and a book excerpt.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

Stay Connected

The Editors

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Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed includes 96 stories (about 480,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! For more information, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

• • • •

All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

Henry Lien

Assistant Editor

Robyn Lupo

Editorial Assistants

Laurel Amberdine

Jude Griffin

Book Reviewers

Andrew Liptak

Sunil Patel

Amal El-Mohtar

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Illustrators

Galen Dara

Elizabeth Leggett

Reiko Murakami

Sam Schechter

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, you might also enjoy these anthologies edited (or co-edited) by John Joseph Adams.

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler) [forthcoming Oct. 2016]

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Dead Man’s Hand

Epic: Legends Of Fantasy

Federations

The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

The Mad Scientist’s Guide To World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

The Way Of The Wizard

What the #@&% Is That? (with Douglas Cohen) [forthcoming Nov. 2016]

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above. Each project also has a mini-site devoted to it specifically, where you’ll find free fiction, interviews, and more.