FSF, May 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  I will be sorry if The Subtle Knife, the second novel in the series, is never made into a movie. And I will be equally sorry if The Golden Compass never finds the wide audience—on DVD and cable and download—that it deserves. This is admittedly not a fun frolic of a warm and fuzzy fairy tale. (Those who require their movies to be thus flocked to America's cineplexes and made a smash hit out of Enchanted this past holiday season.)

  Enchanting in its own way, The Golden Compass is a cold, dark fable. Adults plot evil in support of their own power lust. Children and the underclass suffer. People die and their dæmons evaporate in a burst of golden dust. It's tough stuff for the little tykes to watch, perhaps—but I think they can take it. They live in this world with the rest of us, after all.

  For this film also features one of the most valiant child heroines I have seen in many a day. And although she doesn't experience a sunny and tidy happy ending, she does survive, even prevail, to fight authority another day.

  That's the kind of fable even a world-weary adult can find inspirational.

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  Traitor by M. Rickert

  In the January 2008 issue of Locus magazine, M. Rickert remarked that “I've noticed that I'm getting a lot from the news, not so much [story] ideas as feelings. It's almost like I can feel the characters and their emotions.” Here she gives us a story that surely originated in just such a manner, a timely speculation about the near future.

  Alika with her braids of bells comes walking down the street, chewing bubble gum and singing, “Who I am I'll always be, God bless you and God bless me, America, America, the land of the free!"

  Rover says, “What's that song you're singing, Alika? That ain't no song."

  Alika, only nine, ignores him the same way she's seen her mama ignore the comments of men when she walks with her to the bus stop or the Quickmart.

  "Hey! I'm talking to you!” Rover says.

  But Alika just walks on by and Rover just watches her pass. The girl is only nine and he is nearly twelve. He shakes his head and looks down the street in the other direction. Besides which, she is crazy. Shit, he spits at the sidewalk. Damn! He can't help it. He turns and watches her walking away, her braids jangling.

  "America! America! Oh, I love America! My beautiful country, my own wonderful land, my homeland, America, loves me."

  Alika's mom watches her and shakes her head. She drags her cigarette. Smoke swirls from her nostrils and mouth. Her fingers, with the long green painted nails, tremble.

  Alika sees her sitting there on the stoop. “Hi, Mama!” she calls. The bells ring as she comes running down the walk. Running right toward her mama who sits there with smoke coming out of her ears and nose and mouth.

  "Hey, baby,” Alika's mother says. “Where you been?"

  Alika stops in mid-running-step. Bells go brrring, brrring. She looks at her mama. Her mama looks at her. A truck passes. Fans and air-conditioners hum. Alika watches a bird fly into the branches of a tree, disappear into the green.

  "Alika? Where you been honey?"

  Alika shrugs. The bells jingle softly.

  "Come here, child."

  Alika walks over to her mama.

  "Sit down.” Her mama pats the step, right beside her.

  Alika's butt touches her mother's hip. Alika's mother smells like cigarettes and orchid shampoo. She brings a trembling hand to her lips. Drags on the cigarette, turns to face Alika. Alika thinks she is the luckiest girl in America to have a mama so beautiful.

  "You don't remember none of it?” she says.

  Alika shakes her head. It always happens like this. Her mother puts an arm around her, pulls her tight. Alika's bells ring with a burst. “Good,” her mama says. “Well, all right then. Good."

  They sit there until their butts get sore and then they go inside. Alika blinks against the dark and she hums as she runs up the stairs. Her mother follows behind, so slow that Alika has to wait for her at the door. While she waits, Alika hops from one foot to another. The bells make a quick ring, but Alika's mother says, “Shush, Alika, what did I tell you about making noise out here?"

  Alika stands still while her mother unlocks the door. When she opens it, fans whirl the heat at them. Alika's mom says, “Shit.” She closes the door. Locks it. Chains it. Alika says, “Won't do much good."

  Alika's mother turns fast. “What?” she says with a sharp mean voice.

  Alika shrugs. Brrring. She spins away from her mother, singing, “Oh, America, my lovely home, America for me. America! America! The bloody and the free!"

  "Alika!” her mother says.

  Alika stops in mid-spin. Bells go brrring brring ring tingle tap. She keeps her arms spread out and her feet apart, her eyes focused on the light switch on the wall.

  "I'm going into the room,” Alika's mother says.

  Alika knows what that means.

  "I'll be out in a couple of hours. Your dinner is in the refrigerator. Nuke it for three minutes. And be careful when you take off the plastic wrap. Do you hear me Alika?"

  Nod. (Brrring.)

  "You're a good girl, Alika. Don't turn the TV too loud. Maybe we'll go get ice cream."

  Alika's mother goes into the room. Alika resumes spinning.

  * * * *

  The room is red, the color of resistance. It is stifling hot with all the shades pulled down. She's considered an air-conditioner but it seems selfish when the money could be better spent elsewhere. The resistance isn't about her being comfortable. She takes off her clothes and drops them to the floor. She walks across the room and flips on the radio. It cackles and whines as she flips through the noise. Damn station is always moving. It's never where it was the day before. Finally she finds it. Music comes into the room and fills it up. She is filled with music and red. She walks over to stare at the wall of the dead. She looks at each photograph and says, “I remember.” They smile back at her in shades of black, white, and gray. Sometimes she is tempted to hurry through this part or just say a general “I remember” once to the entire wall. But she knows it isn't her thinking this. Resistance begins in the mind. I remember. She looks at each face. She remembers. It is never easy.

  When that's finished she walks to the worktable. She sits down on the towel, folded across the chair. She looks at the small flag pasted on the wall there. The blue square filled with stars, the forbidden stripes of red and white. She nods. I remember. Then she flicks on the light and bends over her work.

  Alika spins six more times until she is so dizzy, she spins to the chair and plops down. When things fall back in order she looks at the closed door behind which her mother works. Red, Alika thinks and then quickly shakes her belled braids to try not to think it again. Alika's mother doesn't know. Alika has been in the room. She's seen everything.

  Hours later, after Alika has eaten the meatloaf and mashed potatoes and several peas; after the plate has been washed and dried and her milk poured down the drain, while she sits in the dim heat watching her favorite TV show, “This Is the Hour,” her mother comes out of the room, that strange expression on her face, her skin glossy with sweat, and says, “Hey honey, wanna go for ice cream?"

  Alika looks at her and thinks, Traitor. She nods her head. Vigorously. The bells ring but the word stays in her mind.

  It's a hot evening, so everybody is out. “Hi, Alika!” they say. “Hi, Pauline.” Alika and her mother smile and wave, walking down the street. When somebody whistles they both pretend they don't hear and when they pass J.J. who sits on his stoop braiding his own baby girl's hair and he says, “My, my, my,” they just ignore him too. Finally they get to the Quickmart.

  "What flavors you got today?” says Alika's mother. Sometimes, when Mariel is working, they stand around and talk but this is some new girl they've never seen before. She says, “Today's flavors are vanilla, chocolate, and ice cream."

  Alika's mother says, “Oh."

  Alika says, “What's she mean ice cream? Of course the ice cream is flavored ice cream."


  But Alika's mother doesn't pay much attention to her. She looks right at the girl and says, “So soon?” The girl says, “She's already nine. She's going to start remembering.” Then she looks at Alika and says, “What flavor you want?"

  Alika says, “You said vanilla, chocolate, and ice cream."

  The girl smiles. Her teeth are extraordinarily white. Alika stares at them. “Did I say that?” the girl says. “I don't know what I was thinking. Flavors today are Vanilla, Chocolate, and Hamburger."

  "Hamburger?” Alika looks at her mother. This girl is nuts. But her mother is standing there just staring into space with this weird look on her face. “I'll have chocolate,” Alika says. “I always take chocolate."

  The girl nods. “Those sure are pretty braids,” she says as she scoops chocolate ice cream into a cone.

  "I only get one scoop,” says Alika.

  "Well, today we're giving you three,” says the girl with the brilliant white teeth.

  Alika glances at her mother.

  "Don't worry,” the tooth girl says, “she already said it would be all right."

  Alika doesn't remember that. She says, “I don't remember—"

  But her mother interrupts her in that mean voice. “Oh Alika, you never remember anything. Take the ice cream. Just take it."

  Alika looks at the girl. “That's not true,” she says. “I remember some things."

  The girl's eyes go wide.

  Alika's mother grabs her by the wrist and pulls her, walking briskly out the door, Alika's bells ringing. “Mama,” she says, “you forgot to pay that girl."

  "It doesn't matter,” Alika's mama says. “She's a friend of mine."

  Alika turns but the girl no longer stands behind the counter. Some little kids run in and she can hear them shouting “Hey, anyone here?” Alika's mother lets go of her wrist but continues to walk briskly. Alika's bells ring. Her mama says, “You're more like me than anyone else."

  Alika looks up at her beautiful mama and smiles.

  But Alika's mama doesn't look at her. She stares straight ahead. She walks fast. Alika has to take little running steps to keep up. She can't hardly eat her ice cream. It drips over her fingers and wrist and down her arm. Alika licks her arm. “Mama,” she says. Her mama doesn't pay her any mind. She just keeps walking, her legs like scissors, pwish pwish pwish. Her face like rock. Alika thinks, scissors, paper, rock. Her mama is scissors and rock. That makes Alika paper. “Hey Mama,” Alika says, “I'm paper.” But her mother just keeps walking; pwish pwish pwish. Alika turns her wrist to lick her arm. The top two ice cream scoops fall to the sidewalk. “Shit,” she says.

  "What did you say?” the scissors stops and turns her rock face on Alika. “What did I just hear you say?"

  "I'm sorry, Mama."

  "You're sorry?” The rock stands there. Waiting for an answer.

  "Yes, Mama,” Alika says in a tiny, papery voice.

  The rock grabs Alika by the wrist, the one that is not dripping and sticky.

  "Pauline, that girl of yours giving you trouble?"

  The rock turns to face the voice but does not let go of Alika's wrist. “This little thing? She couldn't give trouble to a fly."

  The ice cream in Alika's other hand drips down her arm, the cone collapsing. Alika doesn't know what to do so she drops it to the side-walk.

  The rock squeezes her wrist, “What did you do that for?"

  "Ow, Mama,” Alika says, “you're hurting me.” Her bells clack against each other.

  "Stop it, Alika,” says the rock. “I mean it now. Stop your twisting around this instant."

  Alika stops.

  The rock bends down, face close to Alika's. “I don't want you arguing or crying about some stupid ice cream cone. Do you hear me?"

  Alika can see that the rock is crying. She nods. Brrring. Brrring.

  The rock lets go of Alika's wrist. Alika has to run to keep up, her bells ringing. “Hey, Pauline. Hey, Alika.” Scissors, rock, and paper. Paper covers rock. Scissors get old and rusty. Alika spreads her arms wide. She runs right past her mama. “Alika! Alika!” But she doesn't stop. She is a paper airplane now, or a paper bird. She can't stop. “Alika! Alika!” Her bells ring. “Alika!"

  Her mother doesn't even scold her when she finds her waiting at the top of the stairs. She just says, “Time for bed now."

  While Alika gets ready for bed Pauline goes into the red room. She takes the photographs down from the wall of the dead. She doesn't think about it. She just does it. She goes to the worktable, stares at it for a while, and sighs. She'll have to stay up late to finish. What's she been doing anyway? With her time?

  "Mama? I'm ready for my story."

  She sets the stack of the dead on the worktable.

  "Mama?"

  "I'm coming!” she hollers. She doesn't even bother turning off the light. She'll be back in here soon enough, up half the night, getting everything ready.

  * * * *

  What I'm going to tell you about tonight is ice. From before. When there were winters and all that. When I was a little girl I snuck in my daddy's truck one night. He and my brother, Jagger, were going ice fishing the next morning. They said girls couldn't come along. So I decided to just sneak a ride. I lay there in the back of that truck all night. Let me tell you, it was cold. I had nothing but my clothes and a tarp to keep me warm. I know, you don't understand about cold. It was like being in the refrigerator, I guess. The freezer part, you know, ‘cause that's where it's cold enough for ice. I lay there and looked at the stars. I tried to imagine a time like the one we live in right now. I tried to imagine being warm all over. I closed my eyes and pretended the sun was shining on my face. I guess it worked ‘cause after a while I fell asleep.

  I woke up when Daddy and Jagger came out the door and walked over to the truck. I could hear their footsteps coming across the snow. It sounded like when you eat your cereal. They put the cooler in the back but they didn't see me hid under the tarp. They didn't discover me until we got to the lake. My daddy was mad, let me tell you. Jagger was too. But what were they going to do? Turn around? Daddy called my mama and told her what I did. I could hear her laughing. Jagger could hear her too. We stood there by the side of the frozen lake and stared at each other. You never had a brother. You don't know what it's like. Daddy hung up the phone, put it in his pocket, and said, “Your mama is very disappointed in you.” Then he told me all the rules. How I had to be quiet and stay out of the way. He gave me two big nails to carry in my pocket. They were supposed to help me grab hold of the ice if I fell in.

  The lake was all frozen and pearly white at the edges. You could see the lights shining in half a dozen little shanties. Mama had made red and white curtains for ours.

  Walking across that ice, the sky lit with stars, the faint glow of lights and murmur of voices coming from the shanties, I felt like I was in a beautiful world. Even the cold felt good out there. It filled my lungs. I pictured them, red and shaped like a broken heart.

  When we get into our shanty, my dad lifts the wooden lid off the floor and Jagger starts chipping through the ice there, which was not so thick, my daddy said, since they'd been coming regularly. And then they sat on the benches and my dad popped open a beer. Jagger drank a hot chocolate out of the thermos my mama had prepared for him. He didn't offer to share and I didn't ask. It smelled bad in there, a combination of chocolate, beer, wet wool, and fish. So I asked my dad if it was all right that I went outside. He said just don't bother the other folk and don't wander too far from the ice shanties.

  I walked across the ice, listening to the sound of my footsteps, the faint murmur of voices. The cold stopped hurting. I looked at all the trees surrounding the lake, a lot of pine, but also some bare oak and birch. I looked up at the stars and thought how they were like fish in the frozen sky.

  Anyhow, that's how I came to be practically across the lake when I heard the first shouts, and the next thing I know, ice shanties are tilting and everything is sinking. I hear
this loud noise, and I look down. Right under me there is a crack, come all the way from where the ice shanties are sinking, to under my feet.

  I finger the nails in my pocket though I am immediately doubtful that they will do me much good. At the same time, I start to step forward, because, even though I'm just a kid, I want to help. But when I lean forward the crack gets deeper. When I lean back to my original position the ice cracks again. Men are shouting and I even hear my daddy, calling Jagger's name. But there are only islands of ice between me and the drowning men.

  I am maybe a half-mile away from the opposite shore. The ice in that direction is fissured and cracked but appears to be basically intact, though even as I assess it, more fissures appear. What I have to do is walk away from my father and brother and all the drowning men. I was not stupid. I knew that it wouldn't take long for them to die, that it would take longer for me to walk across the ice. If I made it across. I would say that right at that moment, when I turned away from the men whose shouts were already growing weak, something inside of me turned into ice. It had to, don't you see? I decided to save the only person I could save, myself. I want you to understand, I never blamed myself for this decision. I don't regret it either.

  So, I clutch the nails in my fist and step forward. The ice cracks into a radiated circle like those drawings you used to make of the sun. What else can I do? I lift my foot to take another step. Right then a crow screams. I look up. It's as though that bird is shouting at me to stop. I bring my foot back. Slowly. When I set it down again, I can hear my breath let out. That's when I notice that there is no sound. Just my breath. There is no more shouting. I picture them under the ice, frozen. I picture their faces and the nails falling from ice fingers. It almost makes me want to give up. But instead I take a careful step and just when I feel that ice under me, I exhale, slowly. I want you to understand. I know now and I knew then, that ice doesn't breathe. But it was like I was breathing with the ice. I took the next step fast, and right beneath me the fissure separated. I had to forget about the dead, I had to stop my heart from beating so hard. I had to make myself still. Then, carefully, I lifted my leg. Slowly. Breathing like ice. I breathed like ice, even when I started sweating, and I kept breathing like ice, even when the tears came to my eyes. I did this until I got to the shore on the other side. Only then did I turn around and start bawling. There's a time for emotions, right?