Sleight of Hand

by Peter S. Beagle

  “Child,” her father said, and it was the first time he had called her that, “you will be with me.” But his eyes were troubled, and his voice strangely distant. For the rest of that day, while Kokinja roamed the island, dozed in the sun, and swam for no reason but pleasure, he hardly spoke, but continued watching the horizon, long after both sunset and moonset. When she woke the next morning, he was still pacing the shore, though she could see no change at all in the sky, but only in his face. Now and then he would strike a balled fist against his thigh and whisper to himself through tight pale lips. Kokinja, walking beside him and sharing his silence, could not help noticing how human he seemed in those moments—how mortal, and how mortally afraid. But she could not imagine the reason for it, not until she woke on the following day and felt the sand cold under her.

  Since her arrival on the little island, the weather had been so clement that the sand she slept on remained perfectly warm through the night. Now its chill woke her well before dawn, and even in the darkness she could see the mist on the horizon, and the lightning beyond the mist. The sun, orange as the harvest moon, was never more than a sliver between the mounting thunderheads all day. The wind was from the northeast, and there was ice in it.

  Kokinja stood alone on the shore, watching the first rain marching toward her across the waves. She had no longer any fear of storms, and was preparing to wait out the tempest in the water, rather than take refuge under the trees. But the Shark God came to her then and led her away to a small cave, where they sat together, listening to the rising wind. When she was hungry, he fished for her, saying, “They seek shelter too, like anyone else in such conditions—but they will come for me.” When she became downhearted, he hummed nursery songs that she recalled Mirali singing to her and Keawe very long ago, far away on the other side of any storm. He even sang her oldest favorite, which began:

  When a raindrop leaves the sky,

  it turns and turns to say good-bye.

  “Good-bye, dear clouds, so far away,

  I’ll come again another day….”

  “Keawe never really liked that one,” she said softly. “It made him sad. How do you know all our songs?”

  “I listened,” the Shark God said, and nothing more.

  “I wish…. I wish….” Kokinja’s voice was almost lost in the pounding of the rain. She thought she heard her father answer, “I, too,” but in that moment he was on his feet, striding out of the cave into the storm, as heedless of the weather as though it were flowers sluicing down his body, summer-morning breezes greeting his face. Kokinja hurried to keep up with him. The wind snatched the breath from her lungs, and knocked her down more than once, but she matched his pace to the shore, even so. It seemed to her that the tranquil island had come malevolently alive with the rain; that the vines slapping at her shoulders and entangling her ankles had not been there yesterday, nor had the harsh branches that caught at her hair. All the same, when he turned at the water’s edge, she was beside him.

  “Mirali.” He said the one word, and pointed out into the flying, whipping spindrift and the solid mass of sea-wrack being driven toward land by the howling grayness beyond. Kokinja strained her eyes and finally made out the tiny flicker that was not water, the broken chip of wood sometimes bobbing helplessly on its side, sometimes hurled forward or sideways from one comber crest to another. Staring through the rain, shaking with cold and fear, it took her a moment to realize that her father was gone. Taller than the wave tops, taller than any ship’s masts, taller than the wind, she saw the deep blue dorsal and tail fins, so distant from each other, gliding toward the wreck, on which she could see no hint of life. Then she plunged into the sea—shockingly, almost alarmingly warm, by comparison with the air—and followed the Shark God.

  It was the first and only glimpse she ever had of the thing her father was. As he had warned her, she never saw him fully: both her eyesight and the sea itself seemed too small to contain him. Her mind could take in a magnificent and terrible fish; her soul knew that that was the least part of what she was seeing; her body knew that it could bear no more than that smallest vision. The mark of his passage was a ripple of beaten silver across the wild water, and although the storm seethed and roared to left and right of her, she swam in his wake as effortlessly as he made the way for her. And whether he actually uttered it or not, she heard his fearful cry in her head, over and over—“Mirali! Mirali!”

  The mast was in two pieces, the sail a yellow rag, the rudder split and the tiller broken off altogether. The Shark God regained the human form so swiftly that Kokinja was never entirely sure that she had truly seen what she knew she had seen, and the two of them righted the sailing canoe together. Keawe lay in the bottom of the boat, barely conscious, unable to speak, only to point over the side. There was no sign of Mirali.

  “Stay with him,” her father ordered Kokinja, and he sounded as a shark would have done, vanishing instantly into the darkness below the ruined keel. Kokinja crouched by Keawe, lifting his head to her lap and noticing a deep gash on his forehead and another on his cheekbone. “Tiller,” he whispered. “Snapped…. flew straight at me….” His right hand was clenched around some small object; when Kokinja pried it gently open—for he seemed unable to release it himself—she recognized a favorite bangle of their mother’s. Keawe began to cry.

  “Couldn’t hold her…. couldn’t hold….” Kokinja could not hear a word, for the wind, but she read his eyes and she held him to her breast and rocked him, hardly noticing that she was weeping herself.

  The Shark God was a long time finding his wife, but he brought her up in his arms at last, her eyes closed and her face as quiet as always. He placed her gently in the canoe with her children, brought the boat safely to shore, and bore Mirali’s body to the cave where he had taken Kokinja for shelter. And while the storm still lashed the island, and his son and daughter sang the proper songs, he dug out a grave and buried her there, with no marker at her head, there being no need. “I will know,” he said, “and you will know. And so will Paikea, who knows everything.”

  Then he mourned.

  Kokinja ministered to her brother as she could, and they slept for a long time. When they woke, with the storm passed over and all the sky and sea looking like the first morning of the world, they walked the shore to study the sailing canoe that had been all Keawe’s pride. After considering it from all sides, he said at last, “I can make it seaworthy again. Well enough to get us home, at least.”

  “Father can help,” Kokinja said, realizing as she spoke that she had never said the word in that manner before. Keawe shook his head, looking away.

  “I can do it myself,” he said sharply. “I built it myself.”

  They did not see the Shark God for three days. When he finally emerged from Mirali’s cave—as her children had already begun to call it—he called them to him, saying, “I will see you home, as soon as you will. But I will not come there again.”

  Keawe, already busy about his boat, looked up but said nothing. Kokinja asked, “Why? You have always been faithfully worshipped there—and it was our mother’s home all her life.”

  The Shark God was slow to answer. “From the harbor to her house, from the market to the beach where the nets are mended, to my own temple, there is no place that does not speak to me of Mirali. Forgive me—I have not the strength to deal with those memories, and I never will.”

  Kokinja did not reply; but Keawe turned from his boat to face his father openly for the first time since his rescue from the storm. He said, clearly and strongly, “And so, once again, you make a liar out of our mother. As I knew you would.”

  Kokinja gasped audibly, and the Shark God took a step toward his son without speaking. Keawe said, “She defended you so fiercely, so proudly, when I told her that you were always a coward, god or no god. You abandoned a woman who loved you, a family that belonged to you—and now you will do the same with the island that depends on you for protection and loyalty, that has never failed you, don
e you no disservice, but only been foolish enough to keep its old bargain with you, and expect you to do the same. And this in our mother’s name, because you lack the courage to confront the little handful of memories you two shared. You shame her!”

  He never flinched from his father’s advance, but stood his ground even when the Shark God loomed above him like a storm in mortal shape, his eyes no longer unreadable but alive with fury. For a moment Kokinja saw human and shark as one, flowing in and out of each other, blurring and bleeding together and separating again, in and out, until she became dazed with it and had to close her eyes. She only opened them again when she heard the Shark God’s quiet, toneless voice, “We made fine children, my Mirali and I. It is my loss that I never knew them. My loss alone.”

  Without speaking further he turned toward the harbor, looking as young as he had on the day Mirali challenged him in the marketplace, but moving now almost like an old human man. He had gone some little way when Keawe spoke again, saying simply, “Not only yours.”

  The Shark God turned back to look long at his children once again. Keawe did not move, but Kokinja reached out her arms, whispering, “Come back.” And the Shark God nodded, and went on to the sea

  THE BEST WORST MONSTER

  I like monsters. My children liked monsters (they often asked for monster stories at bedtime). I also like dogs, and poets—one day I’ll set that poem of Beppo the Beggar’s to music—and of course I was raised on mad scientists at Saturday matinees. So here they are, the lot of them, an all-star assemblage recalled for one last farewell performance, as though I were still leaning against a bunk bed in a room cluttered with picture books and stuffed animals….

  From the tips of his twisted, spiky horns all the way down to his jagged claws, the monster was without any doubt the biggest, ugliest, most horrible creature ever made. Since his master had put him together out of spare parts lying around the house, some bits of him were power tools and old television sets, while other bits were made of plastic and wood and stone. His fiery eyes were streaked red and yellow, like the autumn moon, and even his ears and his hair had claws.

  “There!” his master said proudly. “Aren’t you a fine fellow?”

  “Am I?” the monster asked. He had just seen himself in a mirror, and wasn’t sure.

  “You certainly are,” said his master. Then he sent the monster off to stamp the post office flat, because the mailman never delivered any nice letters. This was a real pleasure for the monster, with all the mail flying in every direction, and boxed packages crunching like toast under his feet. It was even better the next day, when his master ordered him to use his great claws to pull the town’s dance pavilion to pieces, just because no girl ever asked his master to dance with her. That was as much fun as a birthday party. He tore down the strings of bright colored lights, and chased the musicians away, and jumped up and down on the bandstand until all that remained was a lot of tiny splinters and a few small shreds of sheet music. The monster was sorry when there was nothing left to smash, because he would have loved to do it all over again.

  That night though, while his master slept, the monster sat outside in the cold, clear air and noticed something that troubled him. He could see quite as well at night as in day, so it was easy for him to look down the rocky slope of his master’s home and study the town curled up in the valley below. He could count every leaf and tile, every window and chimney. And he could see the small dark gaps where the post office and dance pavilion had stood. They were like two hollow eyes in a mask, staring back at him.

  The monster didn’t know much, being only two days old, but he knew that he didn’t like how he was feeling. He wondered if there was something wrong with him.

  Monsters are afraid of wondering, so when morning came he went to his master and said, “Something is happening to me. I don’t know what it is, but it frightens me. Maybe you ought to order me to build something today — just for the change, just until this feeling goes away. I’m sure it will go away.”

  His master was horrified, and very angry too. “I can’t believe this!” he screamed at the monster. “Are you growing a soul in that unspeakable patchwork body of yours? Well I’ll take care of that, and right now!”

  Whereupon he sprayed the monster from horns to claws to antenna-tipped tail with a nasty-smelling mixture called “SoulAway,” which he had invented himself for just such occasions. After that he opened up the monster’s intake valves and poured in gallons of another potion called “SoulBegone.” Then he fed the monster an enormous pill that didn’t have a name, and which stuck in the monster’s throat. He had to climb up on a tall ladder and pound the monster on his back until it went down.

  “There!” he said, “That should do it. A soul’s no trouble to get rid of, if you catch it early.”

  “I still feel all funny,” the monster mumbled.

  But his master told him not to be a fool, and ordered him to go out and pull up the train tracks, because the whistle of the train was half a note sharp. “And while you’re at it, smash up the bakery — I practically broke a tooth on a walnut in a cupcake yesterday. Go!”

  From that morning on, no matter how hard the monster tried to please his master, things kept going wrong. Sometimes he actually found himself being kind, in a monsterish sort of way — like not trampling a home all the way flat, or making a lot of noise before he arrived, so people would have time to run away. Once he even ran away himself, to keep from being sent to squash a whole school where his master was never asked to come speak at graduation. But he couldn’t stay away, because he got lonely. And that worried him even more, because he knew that wicked, soulless monsters were never ever supposed to feel lonely.

  Then one evening, while the monster was watching the stars and wishing he were someone else, his master called for him. After giving him an extra-large dose of “SoulAway,” his master smiled and ordered him to go into town and find a poet named Beppo the Beggar. When he found him, the monster was supposed to step on him, just as though he were a bakery or a post office.

  “Why?”

  “Because he made up a song about me, and I don’t like it. Go and get him. Not his house, mind. Him.”

  So the monster trudged unhappily away to trample a poet.

  He found Beppo the Beggar lying on the riverbank with his hands behind his head, watching the sky and making up a poem. Beppo’s little dog, who was called Pumpernickel, was fast asleep by his side, covered by Beppo’s ragged old coat.

  Beppo’s poem began like this:

  “We fish together every night,

  My Uncle Moon and I.

  We bait our hooks with dreams,

  And throw them in the sky….”

  He looked over at Pumpernickel to see what his best friend thought of the poem so far, but the dog did not even open his eyes. Beppo sighed and chuckled. He tucked the coat closer around his pet, and continued:

  “My Uncle Moon, he catches stars,

  All burning white and blue.

  But I keep angling for your heart —

  No other fish will do….”

  It was only then that he looked up and saw the monster’s foot poised high over him, hiding the night sky and all the stars.

  Beppo did not leap up, screaming and begging for his life. Instead he turned to Pumpernickel and shook him gently awake, telling him, “Run away now, little one. Take care of yourself, and remember me.”

  The monster stood on one foot, not moving, not saying a word.

  Pumpernickel got to his feet, looked at Beppo with his head tilted to one side, and then trotted off into the darkness. Beppo the Beggar lay down again, smiling cheerfully up at that huge foot ready to squash him like a bug. He asked politely, “Would you mind very much letting me finish my poem? I think there’s only one more verse.”

  The monster nodded. Beppo closed his eyes and considered, tracing words in the air with his right forefinger. After a moment he went on:

  “But if I caught you on my line,


  Or in my net below,

  No matter you’re my one desire,

  I’d always let you go.”

  He looked straight at the monster again, and said, “Not great for a last poem, but then I’m not exactly a great poet.” He spread his arms out wide, beckoning the foot down. “It’s a great riverbank, anyway,” he said, and he laughed.

  The monster’s foot came down….

  ….not on Beppo the Beggar, but very slowly and gently on the ground next to him.

  Neither of them said a word. But after a moment the monster turned and started back the way he had come, along the road and up the stony hill to his master’s house. He stamped along as noisily as he could, and for the first time in his life he sang, making up his own music, louder and louder and louder, like a marching song:

  “I don’t know if I have a soul,

  I don’t know if I WANT a soul —

  But whatever Beppo the Beggar has,

  I want one of those!”

  He was a really terrible singer.

  His master heard him coming from a long way off, and he knew exactly what all that racket meant. He stayed just long enough to grab up some monster-making tools and his one good suit, and then he ran out the back door of his house before his monster even got there. And whatever became of him, nobody knows….

  But everybody in town can tell you what became of his monster.

  That very day the monster set about rebuilding everything he had ever smashed to pieces. When he was done with that, he built a house in town for himself, a very big house, with a back garden and a birdbath. After a time people began to ask him to come to dinner: he always went, and was careful not to eat too much or stay too long. He even learned to dance in the new pavilion…. in a monsterish sort of way.

  From time to time, though, he still felt lonely. On those nights he would sit on the hilltop where his master’s house lay abandoned, and ask himself questions with no answers. “Do I have a soul? Do I only think I have a soul? Does it matter?”