"King?" I heard Vala repeat under her breath. "Hann er klikkapor." She looked at me from the corner of her eyes. "He's nuts."
Maybe it was her saying that, or maybe it was me being pissed at myself for crying. But I took a step out towards Tierney and shouted at him.
"It's against the law to cut those trees! It's against the law to do any cutting here without a permit!"
Tierney turned to stare at me. For the first time he looked taken aback, maybe even embarrassed or ashamed. Not by what he'd done, I knew that; but because someone else—a kid—knew he'd done it.
"Who's this?" His voice took on that fake nice tone adults use when they're caught doing something, like smoke or drink or fight with their wives. "This your son, Winter?"
"No," I said.
"Yes," said Vala, and under her breath said the word she'd used when I first met her: feogar.
But Winter didn't say anything, and Tierney had already turned away from me.
"Against the law?" He pulled at the front of his red-and-white windbreaker, then shrugged. "I'll pay the fine. No one goes to jail for cutting down trees."
Tierney smiled then, as though he was thinking of a joke no one else would ever get, and added, "Not me, anyway."
He looked at Al Alford, and nodded. Al quickly turned and walked—ran, practically—to where the Boston Whaler rocked against the metal railing at the end of the dock. Tierney followed him, but slowly, pausing once to stare back up the hillside—not at the King's Pines but at the farmhouse, its windows glinting in the sun where they faced the cliff. Then he walked to where Alford waited by the little motorboat, his hand out to help Tierney climb inside.
I looked at Winter. His face had gone slack, except for his mouth: he looked as though he were biting down on something hard.
"He's going to cut the other ones, too," he said. He didn't sound disbelieving or sad or even angry; more like he was saying something everyone knew was true, like It'll snow soon or Tomorrow's Sunday. "He'll pay the twenty thousand dollar fine, just like he did down in Kennebunkport, he'll wait and do it in the middle of the night when I'm not here. And the trees will be gone."
"No he will not," said Vala. Her voice was nearly as calm as Winter's. There was a subdued roar as the motorboat's engine turned over, and the Boston Whaler shot away from the dock, towards the Ice Queen.
"No," Vala said again, and she stooped and picked up a rock. A small gray rock, just big enough to fit inside her fist, one side of it encrusted with barnacles. She straightened and stared at the ocean, her eyes no longer sky-blue but the pure deep gray of a stone that's been worn smooth by the sea, with no pupil in them; and shining like water in the sun.
"Skammastu peî, Tom Tierney. Farthu til fjandanns!" she cried, and threw the rock towards the water. "Farthu! Låttu peog hverfa!"
I watched it fly through the air, then fall, hitting the beach a long way from the waterline with a small thud. I started to look at Vala, then stopped.
From the water came a grinding sound, a deafening noise like thunder; only this was louder than a thunderclap and didn't last so long, just a fraction of a second. I turned and shaded my eyes, staring out to where the Boston Whaler arrowed towards Tierney's yacht. A sudden gust of wind stung my eyes with spray; I blinked, then blinked again in amazement.
A few feet from the motorboat a black spike of stone shadowed the water. Not a big rock—it might have been a dolphin's fin, or a shark's, but it wasn't moving.
And it hadn't been there just seconds before—it had never been there, I knew that. I heard a muffled shout, then the frantic whine of the motorboat's engine being revved too fast—and too late.
With a sickening crunch, the Boston Whaler ran onto the rock. Winter yelled in dismay as Alford's orange-clad figure was thrown into the water. For a second Tom Tierney remained upright, his arms flailing as he tried to grab at Alford. Then, as though a trapdoor was opened beneath him, he dropped through the bottom of the boat and disappeared.
Winter raced towards the water. I ran after him.
"Stay with Vala," Winter said, grabbing my arm. Alford's orange life vest gleamed from on top of the rock where he clung. On board the Ice Queen, someone yelled from a megaphone, and I could see another small craft, a little inflated Zodiac, dropped into the gray water. Winter shook my arm fiercely. "Justin! I said, stay with her—"
He looked back towards the beach. So did I. Vala was nowhere to be seen. Winter dropped my arm, but before he could say anything there was a motion among the rocks.
And there was Vala, coming into sight like gathering fog. Even from this distance I could see how her eyes glittered, blue-black like a winter sky; and I could tell she was smiling.
The crew of the Ice Queen rescued Alford quickly, long before the Coast Guard arrived. Winter and I stayed on the beach for several hours, while the search and rescue crews arrived and the Navy Falcons flew by overhead, in case Tierney came swimming to shore, or in case his body washed up.
But it never did. That spar of rock ripped a huge hole in the Boston Whaler, a bigger hole even than you'd think; but no one blamed Alford. All you had to do was take a look at the charts and see that there had never been a rock there, ever. Though it's there now, I can tell you that. I see it every day when I look out from the windows at Winter's house.
I never asked Vala about what happened. Winter had a grim expression when we finally went back to his place late that afternoon. Tom Tierney was a multi-millionaire, remember, and even I knew there would be an investigation and interviews and TV people. But everyone on board the Ice Queen had witnessed what happened, and so had Al Alford; and while they'd all seen Winter arguing with Tierney, there'd been no exchange of blows, not even any pushing, and no threats on Winter's part—Alford testified to that. The King's Pine was gone, but two remained; and a bunch of people from the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club and places like that immediately filed a lawsuit against Tierney's estate, to have all the property on the old Packard Farm turned into a nature preserve.
Which I thought was good, but it still won't bring the other tree back.
One day after school, a few weeks after the boat sank, I was helping to put the finishing touches on Winter's house. Just about everything in the house was done, except for the fireplace—there were still piles of rocks everywhere and plastic buckets full of mortar and flat stones for the hearth.
"Justin." Vala appeared behind me, so suddenly I jumped. "Will you come with me, please?"
I stood and nodded. She looked really pregnant now, and serious.
But happy, too. In the next room we could hear Winter working with a sander. Vala looked at me and smiled, put a finger to her lips then touched her finger to my chin. This time, it didn't ache with cold.
"Come," she said.
Outside it was cold and gray, the middle of October but already most of the leaves were gone, torn away by a storm a few nights earlier. We headed for the woods behind the house, past the quince bush, its branches stripped of leaves and all the hummingbirds long gone to warmer places. Vala wore her same bright blue rubber shoes and Winter's rolled-up jeans.
But even his big sweatshirt was too small now to cover her belly, so my mother had knit her a nice big sweater and given her a warm plaid coat that made Vala look even more like a kid, except for her eyes and that way she would look at me sometimes and smile, as though we both knew a secret. I followed her to where the path snaked down to the beach, and tried not to look over at the base of the cliff. The King's Pine had finally fallen and wedged between the crack in the huge rocks there, so that now seaweed was tangled in its dead branches, and all the rocks were covered with yellow pine needles.
"Winter has to go into town for a few hours," Vala said, as though answering a question. "I need you to help me with something."
We reached the bottom of the path and began picking our way across the rocks, until we reached the edge of the shore. A few gulls flew overhead, screaming, and the wind blew hard against my face an
d bare hands. I'd followed Vala outside without my coat. When I looked down, I saw that my fingers were bright red. But they didn't feel cold at all.
"Here," murmured Vala.
She walked, slowly, to where a gray rock protruded from the gravel beach. It was roughly the shape and size of an arm
Then I drew up beside Vala, and saw that it really was an arm—part of one, anyway, made of smooth gray stone, like marble only darker, but with no hand and broken just above the elbow. Vala stood and looked at it, her lips pursed; then stooped to pick it up.
"Will you carry this, please?" she said.
I didn't say anything, just held out my arms, as though she were going to fill them with firewood. When she set the stone arm down I flinched—not because it was heavy, though it was, but because it looked exactly like a real arm. I could even see where the veins had been, in the crook of the elbow, and the wrinkled skin where the arm had bent.
"Justin," Vala said. I looked up to see her blue-black eyes fixed on me. "Come on. It will get dark soon."
I followed her, as she walked slowly along the beach, like someone looking for sea glass or sand dollars. Every few feet she would stop and pick something up—a hand, a foot, a long piece of stone that was most of a leg—then turn and set them carefully into my arms. When I couldn't carry any more, she picked up one last small rock—a clenched fist—and made her way slowly back to the trail.
We made several more trips that day, and for several days after that; each time, we would return to the house and Vala would fit the stones into the unfinished fireplace, covering them with other rocks so that no one could see them; or if you did see one, you'd think maybe it was just part of a broken statue, or a rock that happened to look like a foot, or a shoulder-blade, or the cracked round back of a head.
I couldn't bring myself to ask Vala about it. But I remembered how the Boston Whaler had looked when the Coast Guard dragged it onshore, with a small ragged gash in its bow, and a much, much bigger hole in the bottom, as though something huge and heavy had crashed through it. Like a meteor, maybe. Or a really big rock, or like if someone had dropped a granite statue of a man into the boat.
Not that anyone had seen that happen. I told myself that maybe it really was a statue—maybe a statue had fallen off a ship, or been pushed off a cliff or something.
But then one day when we went down to the beach, the last day actually, Vala made me wade into the shallow water. She pointed at something just below the surface, something round and white, like a deflated soccer ball.
Only it wasn't a soccer ball. It was Tom Tierney's head: the front of it, anyway, the part Vala hadn't already found and built into the fireplace.
His face. I pulled it from the water and stared at it. A green scum of algae covered his eyes, which were wide and staring; his mouth was open and you could see where his tongue had been before it broke off, leaving a jagged edge in the hole that had been his screaming mouth.
"Loksins," said Vala. She took it from me, even though it was so heavy I could barely hold it. "At last . . .."
She turned and walked back up to the house.
That was three months ago. Winter's house is finished now, and Winter lives in it, along with Winter's wife. And their baby. The fireplace is done, and you can hardly see where there is a round broken stone at the very top, which if you squint and look at it in just the right light, like at night when the lights are out and only the fire is going, looks kind of like a face. Winter is happier than I've ever seen him, and my mom and I come over a lot, to see him and Vala and the baby, who is just a few weeks old now and so cute you wouldn't believe it, and tiny, so tiny I was afraid to hold her at first but Vala says not to worry, I may be like her big brother now but someday, when the baby grows up, she will be the one to always watch out for me. They named her Gerda, which means Protector; and for a baby she is incredibly strong.
The Sky is Large
and the Earth is Small
Chris Roberson
Chris Roberson (www.chrisroberson.net) has worked as a baker, taught middle-school history, was a product support engineer, and gave change at an arcade. An exciting new writer, his work is heavily influenced by the pulp adventure classics of the '40s and '50s. He has published six novels, including Set the Seas on Fire, Here, There & Everywhere, and Paragaea: A Planetary Romance. His first short story, "Lord Peter Midnight and the Goblin King," appeared in The Clockwork Reader Volume 1 in 2001. Short story "O One," part of the "Celestial Empire" alternate history sequence, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and won the Sidewise Award in 2004. He is currently working on "Celestial Empire" novels The Dragon's Nine Sons and Iron Jaw and Hummingbird, and cross-time Arthurian science fantasy End of the Century.
The story that follows is part of Roberson's "Celestial Empire" sequence, one of the most interesting future histories currently being written.
Water-Dragon year, 28th year of the Kangxi emperor
Cao Wen stood south of the Eastern Peace Gate of the Forbidden City, facing the entrance to the Eastern Depot. It was an unassuming building, dwarfed by the grandeur of the buildings on the opposite side of the concourse—the Six Ministries, the Court of State Ceremonial, and the Directorate of Astronomy, where the imperial astronomers studied the heavens, watchful of any signs or portents which might auger good or ill for the emperor. Only the Office of Transmission was less grand than the Eastern Depot, its function largely eliminated when the emperor had instituted the palace memorial system, requiring that each of his ministers and deputies communicate their reports to him directly in their own hand, for his eyes only.
At the Eastern Depot's large, unadorned entrance, two guards stood at the ready, sabers sheathed at their sides, poleaxes in their hands. Cao displayed his signs of authority, which marked him as an authorized representative of the Ministry of War. One of the guards studied the papers closely, and then turned and motioned for Cao to accompany him, leaving the other at his post.
Following the guard into the main hall of the Eastern Depot, Cao's eyes lit upon a plaque, on which a motto was engraved in simply crafted characters: "Heart and Bowels of the Court."
"Please wait here," the guard said with an abbreviated bow, "while this one fetches a superior." Then, Cao's papers still in hand, the guard disappeared through one of the many arches leading from the main hall.
Cao waited in silence, as agents of the Eastern Depot came and went, all about the emperor's business. Most were clad in plain gray robes, and would not merit a second glance, were he to pass them on the street. Only a few wore the elaborate mantles which gave the emperor's secret police their name—the Embroidered Guard.
After a few long moments, the guard reappeared, with an older man following close behind. In his simple cotton robes, this older newcomer could have easily passed for a fishmonger or merchant in textiles, thin wisps of mustaches drooping over his thick lips, his eyes half-lidded as though he were just waking from a long slumber. His face, frame, and hands displayed the softened edges that suggested he was a eunuch, one who had traded in his manhood for a life of imperial service.
"Return to your post," the older man said to the guard, who replied only with a rigid nod.
"You are Cao Wen?" the older man says to him, without preamble.
Cao allowed that he was, and bowed lower than the man's appearance would suggest was required. In such a setting, appearances could be deceiving.
"I am Director Fei Ren of the Eastern Depot." The older man brandished the papers Cao had brought with him, which bore the chop of the Minister of War. "I understand you wish to speak with one of our guests?"
"Yes, O Honorable Director," Cao said, bowing again, and lower this time, "it is the wish of His Excellency the Minister of War that I should do so. It is believed that your . . . guest . . . has some intelligence that may be of use to the emperor, may-he-reign-ten-thousand-years."
"This individual has been temporarily housed with us for some considerable time," Director Fei answere
d. "Since before our emperor reached his age of majority. And not all that time spent in the Outside Depot, but some months and years in the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing, as well."
Cao suppressed a shudder. He had heard only whispered rumors about what went on in the private chambers of the Bureau of Suppression and Soothing, which the Embroidered Guard used to elicit confessions from the most recalcitrant suspects.
Director Fei continued. "Any intelligence this individual had to offer has been long since documented, I would venture to say. And had we been able to extract a confession from him on his many crimes, he would long ago have gone under the executioner's blade. I think you will find this one a spent fruit, all juices long since dried up, leaving nothing more than a desiccated husk of a man."
"You are obviously much wiser in such matters than I, Honorable Director," Cao said, with the appropriate tone of humility, "but such is my office to fulfill, and it would displease my master the Minister of War if I were to shirk my responsibility."
Director Fei shrugged. "Very well. It is your own time that you waste. Come along and I will have one of my agents escort you into the Outside Depot."
Director Fei waved over another man dressed in plain robes, this one nearer Cao's own age of twenty years.
"Agent Gu Xuesen will escort you, Cao Wen. Now you must excuse me, as more pressing matters demand my attention."
Cao bowed low, and Director Fei disappeared back into the shadows beyond the main hall.
"This way, sir," Gu said, inclining his head, and starting towards one of the larger arches.
Agent Gu led Cao through the winding labyrinth of passages within the Eastern Depot. The building was larger inside than its exterior would suggest, largely a function of the snaking passages and innumerous small chambers and rooms. Frequently passages opened onto open-air courtyards, and just as frequently onto sunless, dank chambers that had never seen the light of day. And as they went, Agent Gu provided the name and use of each chamber and room.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-II Page 58
