"It doesn't matter,” he whispered. “It was all decided such a very long time ago.” He managed to turn his head and look at her. His voice so soft she had to bend close, he said, “I should never have come here. I should have thrown myself into the sea."
"No!” she said. “Don't say that. Please."
"I thought of it. The night before I arrived. I couldn't do it, even then I could feel you calling to me."
"I don't understand."
Instead of answering he closed his eyes. His breath seemed to flutter in the air just above his mouth. Wiser Than Heaven cried out and pressed her mouth down on his, as if she could trap him inside his body. Too late. Tribute of Angels, who was now Immortal Snake, had returned forever to the world of story.
Wiser Than Heaven stayed with the body for three days. When they finally pulled her away she returned to the small room where she had lived before she met her storyteller.
Across the land, people rubbed their faces and even their entire bodies with ashes. Many refused to eat, while they stopped all work and recited stories from the authorized collections. There was no panic, however. It was God's will, they reassured each other, and waited for the moment when the ministers and wise men would choose a new Immortal Snake.
Only—who would they choose?
Wiser Than Heaven had three sons. The oldest said, “I am the first born. By right the land and all the power should go to me."
The middle son said, “My brother only cares about himself. I have served the people all my life. The power should go to me."
The youngest said, “I was my father's favorite. All power belongs to me."
Each one appealed to Wiser Than Heaven but she refused to speak with them, or to the ministers who begged her for a decision. Each of the brothers gathered allies, spread rumors, made promises. The factions began to battle each other, first through rumors, and then assassinations, and soon armed crowds were fighting each other.
Battalions from the Army of Heaven rushed home, supposedly to stop the fighting, but even before they arrived their commanders had chosen one side or another. Civil war flashed across the land. Finally, Wiser Than Heaven realized she must do something. She summoned her sons, only to have them refuse to be in the same room with each other for fear of assassination. So she saw them separately, and pleaded with each one to give up the fight for the sake of the people. Each one explained that too much had happened, that when he began the struggle he did so for his own glory, but now he continued for the good of the nation.
The conflict was never decided. In the second year, with bodies clogging rivers, and whole cities burned, and dead children tossed into the branches of trees, an even greater calamity fell upon the people. From all sides, from the sea, the mountains, the desert, a great army invaded Mirror of God, formerly known as Written in the Sky. Made up of soldiers from all the countries Mirror of God had conquered or dominated, the Grand Coalition was led by a young Emperor of Mud and Glory. He stood on a boat with black sails, his face radiant, his body raised up on stilts, and beside him, in an ancient robe thickened with dirt, stood a bent figure who may have been a man or may have been a woman.
The Coalition slaughtered the last remnants of the once terrible Army of Heaven. They killed half the women and almost all the men, and took the children as slaves. In a short time all three brothers were executed in the Plaza of Celestial Glory. Their mother disguised herself as one of the old women who tend the fires of the dead, and threw herself on the flames of her youngest son.
The soldiers tore down the Nine Rings of Heaven and Earth, they smashed every building, every statue, they burned down farms and villages. Then they plowed salt into the cracked earth so that nothing could grow there. At the very end, the Emperor of Mud and Glory stood among the blood-soaked ashes and proclaimed, “God has cursed this place forever and ever."
That was the end of the land of Written in the Sky. Once it was the most powerful of all the world's peoples. Now nothing remains of it but sand and misery and a hatred whose origin no one even remembers—that, and the secret traces of a storyteller who was both its glory and its destruction.
* * * *
Author's Note
The story of Immortal Snake was inspired by a very old tale, published early in the twentieth century by the mythographer Leo Frobenius. Known as “The Ruin of Kasch,” the story describes how a mysterious storyteller slave overthrew the age-old power of the priests. As with Written in the Sky, Kasch became rich and powerful under the rule of the storyteller, only to plummet to destruction in the next generation. Its enemies cursed the land and the people, so that forever after they would be plagued by barrenness, war, and the hatred of their neighbors. Kasch was an actual place in the ancient world, its location in Africa precisely known. The modern name for the land of Kasch is Darfur.
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Plumage From Pegasus: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Text by Paul Di Filippo
"In an attempt to give readers some real-life romance, mass market fiction house Dorchester is partnering with the on-line dating service Cupid.com to co-host ‘speed dating’ events in five cities starting next month. Attendees will get copies of Dorchester books, dating tips from Dorchester authors—and, in an ideal situation, a mate, too."
—"Readers Find Love,” by Lynn Andriani, PW Daily, April 13, 2006.
* * * *
It just wasn't working out between Sheila and me. After three years of marriage punctuated by endlessly recurring arguments, accusations and tearful reconciliations, I was finally ready to call it quits.
Speaking firmly but with no hostility, I brought up the subject of divorce one morning at the breakfast table.
Sheila took it well. After all, this particular outcome to our turbulent relationship could hardly have come as a surprise to her.
Staring soberly at her coffee as she tinkled a spoon around the inside of her cup, Sheila said, “Sure, Stan. We could break up. That would be easy enough. But there's one last thing we could try—if you're willing."
"What's that?” I said, my curiosity piqued.
Sheila looked up at me with a tentatively hopeful expression. “We could call the publisher."
"Publisher?"
Sheila grabbed a paperback from an adjacent counter. The butter-stained, crumb-sprinkled cover depicted a man and a woman torridly grappling against a background of medieval warfare between peasants and barbarians. The type on the cover announced Savage Vandal Kisses, by Faustina Chambliss.
"Don't you remember? Dorchester Publishing. They introduced us."
Memories from four years ago flooded vividly back to me.
Sheila and I had met through an on-line dating service, during a special promotion they had been holding in conjunction with a publisher of romance novels, Dorchester Books.
Sheila was a big fan of that genre, although I had no interest in such sappy stuff. Her affection for such reading material had not waned over the years, and I was by now quite familiar with at least the names of her favorite authors, and a little of what went on between those lurid covers.
Back then, Sheila and I became instantly infatuated with each other during our speed date, and marriage followed shortly thereafter. Perhaps too swiftly, given the revelations of our subsequent incompatability.
Sheila flipped the paperback open to a house advertisement at the back. “Dorchester has just started a counseling service for all the couples who met through their earlier dating program. Who would be better able to help us? And it's completely free—"
"How does it work? Would we have to go to their headquarters? Where are they anyhow?"
"New York. No, there's no travel necessary. They send a counselor to us...."
"I don't know. It all sounds pretty weird...."
"Stan, please? For me?"
Looking at my wife, with her dewy eyes and trembling chin, I saw again what had first attracted me to her. A small, dim spark began to kindle in my heart. Perhaps there was so
me way to salvage what we had once enjoyed, and to have some happy future together.
"All right, let's give it a try."
I must say that my lateness for work that morning was a good sign of possible improvements to come.
Just a little over a week later, on a Saturday, the doorbell rang.
"I'll get it!” Sheila called out, dashing through the house. I followed more sedately.
There on the doorstep stood a woman whose face I recognized from numerous appearances in various Dorchester newsletters and website links.
Faustina Chambliss.
Faustina Chambliss was the general shape of a fire hydrant, and not much bigger. Beneath auburn curls, her plump, animated face reminded me of a wheel of strawberry cheesecake. She wore a pants suit whose fabric replicated a Henri Rousseau jungle landscape. She held the strap of a large bag slung over one shoulder. She could have been any age from twenty-seven to sixty-seven.
Beside her rested a steamer trunk three times her size. An airport shuttle van was pulling away down our driveway.
"Hello, lovebirds! All your romantic travails are over! Faustina is here!"
Sheila's expression matched that of a teenager encountering some adored pop star in the flesh. “Oh, Miss Chambliss, I never thought—It's so wonderful you could answer our request. Please, come in, come in."
The woman swept past us, waving a hand studded with chunky rings in my direction. “Get Faustina's trunk, young man, if you would be so kind."
I was quietly fuming as I manhandled the big awkward trunk into the front parlor. It was obvious that this clownish woman would side entirely with Sheila, employing the common language they shared to put me down as the only villain in this whole affair.
Faustina Chambliss and Sheila were sitting side by side on the couch when I finished my sweaty task. The author had removed a laptop computer from her satchel. She had set the device up on the low table in front of the couch.
"Marvelous!” Faustina Chambliss exclaimed. “You've got a large-screen TV! I had been hoping you would. It will help our therapy immensely. Please—Stan, is it?—could you pop this DVD into your player?"
Muttering, I took the DVD, slotted it into the player, and brought the remote control to Faustina Chambliss. I expected her to start up whatever bit of counseling video she had for us immediately. But to my surprise, she didn't.
"Please, sit down, Stan. Faustina wants to get to know all about you and Sheila and your recent soul-hardships."
Reluctantly, self-consciously, slowly, I began talking, describing how our marriage had gone bad. Sheila chimed in at frequent intervals, and our separate monologues actually began to form a dialogue, our first in many months.
"But you never said—"
"How was I supposed to know—"
"That was so foolish—"
"You could have tried harder—"
Throughout our conversation, Faustina Chambliss encouraged us with various positive exhortations. And all the while, her pudgy fingers flew across the keyboard of her laptop.
Finally, as we began to wind down, Faustina Chambliss signaled the next stage of her counseling mission.
"All right, dears, Faustina believes she understands your situation quite well. She now knows just the sequence you need. Please go to the trunk."
We went to the trunk, and I opened it up.
Inside, on rods, hung dozens of elaborate costumes, more than seemed possible given the space.
Faustina Chambliss directed us with a red-nailed finger. “Men's outfits on the left, women's on the right. Find the pirate and heiress costumes. They'll be on matching hangers."
Sheila and I took out the designated clothing.
"Now put them on. Oh, don't be shy! Faustina has seen everything!"
We stripped to our underwear and donned the new outfits.
A DVD menu had appeared on the TV screen, and Faustina Chambliss was cursoring down it until she hit the line that read Bride of the Briney Boudoir.
"Stand facing the screen, please."
We did so, and Faustina Chambliss tapped PLAY.
The TV came alive with a shipboard scene. The huge plasma screen made me feel as if I were actually there. A pirate captain and an heiress were engaged in a confrontation. Their speech showed up as text, like karaoke.
"Now, play out the scene, please, sweetlings!"
Awkwardly, Sheila and I began mimicking the actors.
"You're a right hell cat, Lady Fiona! But I'll shatter your pride—and your maidenhead!—ere we reach Barbados!"
"Nay, Captain Hardmast! For this dirk I clasp ever to my bosom will rob thee of your velvet prize in a gush of blood!"
By the time the scene was over—probably only three or four minutes—I found my heart racing and my breath labored. Sheila and I were locked in an unrequited embrace, faces just inches apart.
Breaking the spell, Faustina Chambliss said, “Well done, children! But no time to indulge yet! Onward! Deep into Faustina's characters!"
We changed costumes—I was a priest, and Sheila looked like Stevie Nicks—and Faustina Chambliss clicked on The Witches of West Palm Beach.
"Why, Father Darling, how could I be a witch? Aren't I standing ever so close to this big old cross resting on your broad chest?"
"Your kind is cunning. But at the pool I saw the mark of Satan on your—on your shamelessly exposed buttocks!"
"Oh, really? Would you care to confirm that now?"
In short order, we worked our way through Sagebrush Sorrows, Executive Passions, Harlot of the Highlands, Geishas Never Cry, Minefields of the Heart, Born to Love Rock Stars, Timeslip Temptress, Hollywood Heartaches and Intergalactic Desires.
All the while, I felt myself growing strangely close to Sheila, as if seeing her in all these permutations had opened up new vistas to our relationship. I knew suddenly that never again would I take her for granted, or be bored with our life together.
For the last-named scenario, I was costumed like a hard-bitten loner of a starship pilot, and Sheila like a privileged princess.
"You nearly got us killed back there!"
"I did not!"
We began throwing wild, ineffectual punches at each other. But the fight soon evolved into a fevered clinch. We fell to the floor, kissing. Shreds of costume flew through the air as I ripped Sheila's alien bodice open.
During our love-tussle, I vaguely noticed that Faustina Chambliss's fingers never stopped on the keyboard of her machine, nor did her pleased exclamations.
"Brilliant, Faustina, brilliant! What material! Your next three novels are all right here!"
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Firooz and His Brother by Alex Jeffers
Alex Jeffers was sixteen when Robert Silverberg bought his first story. He has gone on to publish one novel, Safe as Houses, as well as short stories in anthologies such as Universe 3 and His 2. His F&SF debut is a striking tale set in the Middle East. Mr. Jeffers notes that he is working on a long novel called Dreamherder to which this story is connected. He says he expects to finish the novel any decade now.
They were all merchants, the men of his family, caravan masters, following the long road from Samarkand to the great city of Baghdad at the center of the world. A youth on his first journey, Firooz often did not know quite what was required of him. Because he wrote a handsome, legible hand and could do sums in his head, before they left Samarkand he had helped his uncle prepare the inventory: silks, porcelains, spices from the distant east; cottons, dyes, spices from the hot lands south of the mountains; carpets, woolens, leather and hides, books from local workshops. On the road, such skills commanded little respect. He could shoot, could manage both short and long blades, but the paid guards knew him for a liability if bandits were to strike: he was his uncle's heir, they had been instructed to protect him. He made coffee when they camped, tended and groomed the horses of his uncle and the other merchants, cared for their hounds. Mostly he felt superfluous.
Along one of the many deso
late stretches when the plodding caravan was days away from the town it had last passed through and the next, his uncle told him to take his bow and one of the hounds, ride away from the bustle and clamor of the caravan to hunt. Fresh game would be a treat.
Before they had gone very far, the hound sighted a small herd of deer grazing on the scrub. When Firooz loosed the hound, she coursed across the plain, silent. Holding his bow ready and drawing an arrow from the quiver, Firooz spurred his horse after. On an abrupt shift of the breeze, the deer caught the hunters’ scent. Lifting their heads as one, they turned and fled, leaping and bounding across the plain.
The hound had her eye on a particular animal she must have sensed to be weaker or more confused than the others. She pursued it relentlessly, leading Firooz farther and farther from the caravan, into a broken country where strange spires of jagged rock thrust up through the loose soil, twisted little trees clinging to their flanks. All the other deer had vanished. The young buck they followed cantered nimbly among the spires and towers and bastions. Steep shadows fell from tall spires and scarps, filling narrow passages with dusk. Springs and streams flowed here, watering the soil and nourishing seeming gardens of wildflowers in bloom, more lovely than anything Firooz had seen since leaving Samarkand. There were trees as well, protected from the winds of the plain, tall and straight and broad, and lush stretches of green turf. If he had not been intent on the deer's white rump and the hound's feathered tail, Firooz should have been astounded.
The deer's strength was failing. It staggered, leapt forward again, ducked around a steep formation. The hound sped after it. Wrenching his mare around the corner, Firooz entered the deep, cool shade of a woods cramped narrowly between two arms of rock and slowed to a walk. He saw neither deer nor hound among the trees. There was nowhere to go but forward, however. The mare's hooves fell muffled on leaf mold. Firooz did not recognize the trees.
After a time, he heard barking ahead and spurred the horse into an easy trot. The barks broke up, became distinct: two different voices. Over the hound's melodious baying, which echoed from the high walls of the canyon, sounded the sharp, warning yaps of a second dog.
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