The Best of Kage Baker

by Kage Baker

  ***

  They went on a picnic the next day, farther up the highway, a place where a creek flowed down to the sea. There were moonstones here and there in the shingle, and her parents set the children searching for them, until the boys tired of it and started throwing handfuls of pebbles at each other. One of her sisters saw a snake, and screamed. The baby found a sun-dried dead fish and protested when her mother pried it out of his fist. There was an Indian crouched on the streambank, filling jars of water, but he was only a phantom.

  That night she dreamed of the blue light that had shone up through the water in the cave. It was fathomless, so beautiful a blue she woke crying.

  ***

  The next day was Sunday, and her father made them all dress and go to the church in town, even though they were on vacation. When she made her way back to the caves after church, the boy was sitting on the old staircase, looking a little forlorn. He started as she pulled herself up over the edge.

  “Oh, it’s just you.”

  “Just me,” she agreed. “I had to go to church. Do you go to Saint Catherine’s?”

  “I don’t go to church,” he said.

  “Your dad doesn’t make you go?”

  He shook his head. “My dad tried to have me baptized there when I was a baby, and the priest wouldn’t do it. So my dad said he was never setting foot in there again.”

  She was scandalized. “But babies who don’t get baptized go to Limbo! Gee, that was some mean old priest.”

  “I don’t care.” The boy stared out at the sea. The wind was from offshore, bringing the sound of bells ringing for the midday service. Gulls circled and cried overhead.

  “I have twenty-five cents,” she said. “I was supposed to put a dime in the collection plate, but I dropped it and it rolled under the pew, and by the time I crawled under and found it the man with the little basket was gone, but there was another dime and a nickel down there. Can I go see the Caverns of Mystery again?”

  “You want to see something better? Come on.” He led her up over the top of the cliff, and then trotted off in the direction of the dinosaur. She followed along the dirt track through the high grass. He crouched and scrambled under the dinosaur’s belly, and vanished. She got down on hands and knees and crawled after him, and a moment later stood up and found herself in a barrel chamber of lath and chicken wire. He was sitting crosslegged a few feet farther in, looking at her expectantly.

  “Wow,” she said. “This is pretty neat.”

  “If you climb up the neck, you can spy on the cars on the highway,” he said. “Go on, take a look.”

  She obliged him, gingerly avoiding rusty nails, climbing up the long slanting tunnel of the neck to the blue window where the dinosaur’s head would have been. The wind whistled through the ends of wire that stuck out into space. She looked out at the highway and watched a pink and black sedan zoom past. She looked down at the meadow below. Two phantoms stood there, looking up at the dinosaur proudly.

  The man was wearing overalls and work boots, had his arm around the woman. He was grinning, gesturing, speaking silently and pointing at the dinosaur. The woman was small and meek-looking, with her hair pulled back in a bun. The man had the same face as the weeping phantom on the beach. More: he had the same face as the man behind the counter.

  She made the connection, and filed it in with the other adult sorrows she had catalogued. Something sad had happened here, but sad things happened all the time. They were better ignored. She turned her face away and crawled back down out of the dinosaur’s neck.

  “You should put a head on this, one of these days,” she said. “With the mouth open, so you could still look out.”

  “My dad won’t finish it,” the boy said. “He never finishes anything. I think he’s nuts.”

  “You could do it when you grow up.”

  “I’m not sticking around here when I grow up,” he said, scornfully. “I’m going to join the Merchant Marine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like the Navy, only different,” he said. “You want to go see the caverns now?”

  There was no one behind the counter. “Where’s your dad?” she asked.

  “He went into town. I run the place when he’s away,” said the boy breezily, opening the cave door and turning on the light. “We don’t need tickets. Let’s go down.”

  They descended. The light was streaming full through the gap where the sea was only just beginning to wash in, with the turning tide, a few cream-edge waves running up the shingle. She glanced over at the smaller cavern, beyond the sawhorses, and saw blue lights dancing in the darkness. “Oh—” She started toward them. He followed close.

  “I wish this part hadn’t fallen in,” she said.

  He pulled back one of the sawhorses. “It didn’t fall in. You want to see?”

  “But your dad said it wasn’t safe.”

  “He just made that up,” said the boy, and bounded up the slope into the cavern. “It’s keen in here. I swim in here all the time. Come look.”

  She followed. The blue lights swam lazily. There was the grotto she had only glimpsed from the entrance, glowing like an aquamarine. Some trick of sunlight shining down into all that white limestone, reflected somehow up into the cavern where it opened out, who knew how far below?… And there was something down there, shining in the other world, a flash of gold in the blue…

  She moved forward involuntarily, and then saw the phantoms.

  The women were locked together, struggling at the edge of the pool, and the limpid water in a bygone hour roiled and foamed white. The small woman no longer looked meek; her teeth were bared, her dark eyes flashed with hatred, her wet hair snaked around her face as she clawed at the other. And the other…

  The other woman groped for her adversary’s throat with salt-white hands. Her lips were coral-red, her golden hair floated out behind her as she sank further into the water, her eyes glowed like green moons. Something broke the water in a white fountain, sending slow drops spinning upward as light coruscated on gleaming scales.

  She stared. Beside her, the boy had turned his back and was pulling down his trunks. He stepped out of them, turned and dove into the pool. He was grinning when he surfaced.

  “Skinny dipping! You want to come in?”

  She blushed. “No, thank you—I—”

  “Nobody’ll see,” he said. “It’s nice. It’s not cold. Really.”

  Still, she hesitated. She was pretty sure that if her parents ever found out that she’d taken off her clothes in front of a stranger, the punishment would be unimaginable, certainly worse than what her brothers had incurred for setting fire to the garden shed. And yet, she wondered what the water would feel like on her bare skin…

  And his body was a beautiful color, in the undersea light. The gold glinted up from below, backlit him. She cleared her throat.

  “What’s all that gold, down there?”

  He looked at her sharply. “You see it?”

  “Yes.”

  He swam close, looked up into her face. “It’s treasure,” he said, earnest, pleading. “Gold and jewels from old wrecks. The storms washed it in. There’s tons of it down there. You can dive down and touch it. It’s easy. Come on.”

  “Can I come in with my clothes still on?”

  “Sure, if you want. Come on. There’s this neat place down there, I can show you. Nobody stares at you there, nobody laughs. You’re like me, you’d really like it. Come see.”

  She was reaching up to take off her glasses when the hoarse voice cried, “What are you doing there?”

  She turned, and saw the faded man standing at the bottom of the stairs, no phantom now. He crossed the cavern in what seemed like four bounds, and had grabbed her by the arm when he looked down and saw the boy. There had been anger in his face, before; now there was an emotion she couldn’t understand at all, some adult compound of revulsion and fear.

  “I gave you a chance, didn’t I, Ricky?” he said, in the sort
of voice one grownup uses to another. He let go her arm and drew something from the pocket of his overalls: a monkey wrench. “I gave you every chance. You come out of there.”

  “You go to Hell!” the boy snarled, and only then did she see that the pink scar on his neck had opened on either side and was pulsing, pulsing in the water.

  “Oh,” she said, realizing that this was one of those places where the jagged edges of the world showed, the parts people weren’t supposed to see, the madness under the smooth rational surface. Yet here all the story fragments linked up, all the images came together into coherence. “Oh. She wasn’t jealous after all. She just wanted her baby back—”

  The man whirled, staring at her. She didn’t know what this new look in his eyes meant, either, but she understood well enough that if she didn’t get away from him as fast as she could, something bad was going to happen.

  She turned and ran across the outer cavern. Her foot slipped on the shingle; she lurched straight down into a receding wave, and before she could rise to hands and knees another one burst in beneath the rock and caught her, pulling her under.

  A second later she burst into sunlight and air, and dogpaddled frantically, looking around. The wave was sucking her out to sea. She caught a rock and managed to hold on, losing her glasses as the wave receded. Once she got her feet under her she was able to wade for the base of the cliff, leaning against the pull of the tide. Around the cliff’s edge and she walked up onto hard sand, and after a moment got her breath and ran.

  Her mother scolded her for coming home soaked and with skinned knees, and for having lost her glasses. She was sent to bed, where she huddled gladly, trying to get warm.

  Las Lloronas. She thought about the woman looking for her baby, moaning and lamenting. But the caves had moaned long before the boy had been born. The Indians and the Spanish had known they were haunted. She wondered whether there were stories so powerful they settled in a place and shaped everything and everyone around them, so they played out over and over again. And some of them must overlap, in layers, to make new stories…

  On their last night by the sea, her parents threw a party for the friends they’d made. They built a bonfire on the beach. Her father carried down two cases of beer and a barbecue, and her mother brought blankets and marshmallows and hamburger wrapped in aluminum foil. Her brothers and sisters ran around in the dark.

  The stars glittered, thousands, more than she’d ever seen in the city. The Milky Way trailed down to the horizon. She walked away from the firelight to see it better. The tide was out, and the stars were burning on the wet flat sand too, the dark mirror disturbed only by a crab that made its slow sidelong way down the beach.

  She heard the boy calling, and looked up and saw him standing just beyond the first line of breakers. He looked cold and scared.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “They came and took my dad away,” he said, in a hoarse voice. His lip was split, and he was missing a tooth.

  “Who did?”

  He didn’t answer her. He just stared.

  “What are you going to do now? You want to come up to our fire?”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to run away,” he said. “Join the Merchant Marine. You want to come, too?”

  “Yes, but I’m a girl,” she said, “We can’t do that kind of thing. Please, come up to our fire and get warm.”

  But he shook his head again, backing away into the dark water, and she knew he wouldn’t come ashore, and she ached to run after him and dive into the night waves with him. She didn’t, though. She stood there with tears running down her face, watching him vanish in the white spray and the starlight.

  Are You Afflicted With Dragons?

  There must have been a dozen of the damned things up there.

  Smith walked backwards across the hotel’s garden, glaring up at the roofline. The little community on the roof went right on with its busy social life, preening, squabbling over fish heads, defecating, spreading stubby wings in the morning sunlight, entirely unaware of Smith’s hostile scrutiny.

  As he continued backward, Smith walked into the low fence around the vegetable patch. He staggered, tottered and lurched backward, landing with a crash among the demon-melon frames. Instantly, a dozen tiny reptilian heads turned; a dozen tiny reptilian necks craned over the roof’s edge. The dragons regarded Smith with bright fascinated eyes. Smith growled at them helplessly as he flailed there, and they went into tiny reptilian gales of piping laughter.

  Disgusted, Smith got to his feet and dusted himself off. Mrs. Smith, who had been having a quiet smoke by the back door, peered at him.

  “Did you hurt yourself, Smith?”

  “We have to do something about those,” said Smith, jerking a thumb at the dragons. “They’re getting to be a nuisance.”

  “And possibly a liability,” said Mrs. Smith. “Lady What’s-her-name, the one with that pink palace above Cable Steps, had dinner on the terrace last night with a party of friends. I’d just sent Mr. Crucible out with the Pike Terrine when one of these little devils on the roof flies down, bold as you please, and lights on the lady’s plate. She screamed and then for a moment everyone was amused, you know, and one or two of them even said the horrible little creature was cute. Then it jumped up on her shoulder and started worrying at her earring.

  “Fortunately Crucible had the presence of mind to come after it with the gravel rake, and it flew away before it could do Milady any harm, but she wasn’t pleased at all. I had to give them free pudding all around and two complimentary bottles of Black Gabekrian.”

  Smith winced. “That’s expensive.”

  “Not as expensive as Milady’s bullies coming down here and burning the hotel over our heads. What if the little beast had managed to pull out her earring and then flown off with it, Smith?”

  “That’d finish us, all right.” Smith rubbed his chin. “I’d better go see if I can buy some poison at Leadbeater’s.”

  “Why don’t we simply call in an exterminator?” Mrs. Smith puffed smoke.

  “No! They charge a duke’s ransom. Leadbeater’s got something, he swears it does the job or your money back.”

  Mrs. Smith looked doubtful. “But there was this fellow in the marketplace only the other day, had a splendid pitch. ‘Are you afflicted with DRAGONS?’ he shouted. Stood up on the steps of Rakut’s monument, you know, and gave this speech about his secret guaranteed methods. Produced a list of testimonials as long as your arm, all from grateful customers whose premises he’d ridded of wyrmin.”

  Smith grunted. “And he’d charge a duke’s ransom and turn out to be a charlatan.”

  Mrs. Smith shrugged. “Have it your way, then. Just don’t put it off any longer, or we’ll be facing a lawsuit at the very least.”

  ***

  Leadbeater’s & Son’s was an old and respected firm, three dusty floors’ worth of ironmongery with a bar in the cellar. Great numbers of the city’s population of males of a certain age disappeared through its doors for long hours at a time; some of them practically lived there. Smith was by no means immune to its enchantment.

  Regardless of what he needed, Smith generally began with climbing up to the third floor to stare at Bluesteel’s Patented Improved Spring-driven Harvester, a gleaming mystery of wheels, gears, blades, leather straps and upholstery, wherein a man might ride at his leisure while simultaneously cutting down five acres of wheat. Mr. Bluesteel had assembled it there for the first Mr. Leadbeater, long years since, and there it sat still, because it was so big no one had been able to get it down the stairs and the only other option was taking off the roof and hoisting it out with a crane.

  Smith had a long satisfying gawk at it, and then continued on his usual progress: down to the second floor to browse among the Small Iron Goods, to see whether there were any hinges, bolts, screws or nails he needed, or whether there might be anything new and stylish in the way of drawer pulls or doorknobs. Down, then, to the ground floor, where he idled wis
tfully among the tools in luxuriant profusion, from the bins full of cheap hammers to the really expensive patent wonders locked behind glass. At last, sadly (for he could not admit to himself that he really needed a clockwork reciprocating saw that could cut through iron bars with its special diamond-dust attachment) Smith wandered back through the barrels of paint and varnish to the Compounds area, where young Mr. Leadbeater sat behind the counter doing sums on a wax tablet.

  “Leadbeater’s son,” said Smith by way of greeting.

  “Smith-from-the-hotel,” replied young Leadbeater, for there were a lot of Smiths in Salesh-by-the-Sea. He stuck his stylus behind his ear and stood. “How may I serve? Roofing pitch? Pipe sealant? Drain cleaner?”

  “What have you got for dragons?”

  “Ah! We have an excellent remedy.” Young Leadbeater gestured for Smith to follow him and went sidling back between the rows of bins. “Tinplate’s Celebrated Gettemol! Very cleverly conceived. Here we are.” He raised the lid on a bin. It was full of tiny pellets in a riot of brilliant colors.

  “It looks delicious,” said Smith.

  “That’s what your wyrmin will think,” said young Leadbeater. “They’ll see this and they’ll leave off hunting fish, see? They’ll fill their craws with it and, tchac! It’ll kill them dead. How bad is your infestation?”

  “There’s a whole damned colony of them on the roof,” said Smith.

  “Well. You’ll want a week’s worth—I can sell you a couple of buckets to carry it in—and for that kind of volume we throw in a statue of Cliba and the Cliba Prayer, put a shrine where the dragons can see it and keeps ’em from coming back, very efficacious—and then of course you’ll need new roofing and gutters once you’ve cleaned your dragon colony out—”

  “What for?”

  “Because if you’ve got that many of them on your roof, ten to one they’ve been prying up the leading to hide things under it, and once their droppings get underneath on your roof beams they eat right through, and you don’t want that, trust me. Highly corrosive droppings, dragons. Just about impossible to get the stink out of plaster, too. Had them long?”