The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  Michael and Barbara sat on the front porch as the car drove up. Somehow a visit by Auntie Danser didn’t bother them as much as it did me. They didn’t fawn over her, but they accepted her without complaining—even out of adult earshot. That made me think more carefully about them. I decided I didn’t love them any the less, but I couldn’t trust them, either. The world was taking sides, and so far on my side I was very lonely. I didn’t count the two old people on my side, because I wasn’t sure they were—but they came a lot closer than anybody in my family.

  Auntie Danser wanted to read Billy Graham books to us after dinner, but Dad snuck us out before Mom could gather us together—all but Barbara, who stayed to listen. We watched the sunset from the loft of the old wood barn, then tried to catch the little birds that lived in the rafters. By dark and bedtime I was hungry, but not for food. I asked Dad if he’d tell me a story before bed.

  “You know your mom doesn’t approve of all that fairy-tale stuff,” he said.

  “Then no fairy tales. Just a story.”

  “I’m out of practice, son,” he confided. He looked very sad. “Your mom says we should concentrate on things that are real and not waste our time with make-believe. Life’s hard. I may have to sell the farm, you know, and work for that feed-mixer in Mitchell.”

  I went to bed and felt like crying. A whole lot of my family had died that night, I didn’t know exactly how, or why. But I was mad.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t go to school the next day. During the night I’d had a dream, which came so true and whole to me that I had to rush to the stand of cottonwoods and tell the old people. I took my lunch box and walked rapidly down the road.

  They weren’t there. On a piece of wire bradded to the biggest tree they’d left a note on faded brown paper. It was in a strong feminine hand, sepia-inked, delicately scribed with what could have been a goose-quill pen. It said: “We’re at the old Hauskopf farm. Come if you must.”

  Not “Come if you can.” I felt a twinge. The Hauskopf farm, abandoned fifteen years ago and never sold, was three miles farther down the road and left on a deep-rutted fork. It took me an hour to get there.

  The house still looked deserted. All the white paint was flaking, leaving dead gray wood. The windows stared. I walked up the porch steps and knocked on the heavy oak door. For a moment I thought no one was going to answer. Then I heard what sounded like a gust of wind, but inside the house, and the old woman opened the door. “Hello, boy,” she said. “Come for more stories?”

  She invited me in. Wildflowers were growing along the baseboards, and tiny roses peered from the brambles that covered the walls. A quail led her train of inch-and-a-half fluffball chicks from under the stairs, into the living room. The floor was carpeted, but the flowers in the weave seemed more than patterns. I could stare down and keep picking out detail for minutes. “This way, boy,” the woman said. She took my hand. Hers was smooth and warm, but I had the impression it was also hard as wood.

  A tree stood in the living room, growing out of the floor and sending its branches up to support the ceiling. Rabbits and quail and a lazy-looking brindle cat stared at me from tangles of roots. A wooden bench surrounded the base of the tree. On the side away from us, I heard someone breathing. The old man poked his head around and smiled at me, lifting his long pipe in greeting. “Hello, boy,” he said.

  “The boy looks like he’s ready to tell us a story, this time,” the woman said.

  “Of course, Meg. Have a seat, boy. Cup of cider for you? Tea? Herb biscuit?”

  “Cider, please,” I said.

  The old man stood and went down the hall to the kitchen. He came back with a wooden tray and three steaming cups of mulled cider. The cinnamon tickled my nose as I sipped.

  “Now. What’s your story?”

  “It’s about two hawks,” I said, and then hesitated.

  “Go on.”

  “Brother hawks. Never did like each other. Fought for a strip of land where they could hunt.”

  “Yes?”

  “Finally, one hawk met an old crippled bobcat that had set up a place for itself in a rockpile. The bobcat was learning itself magic so it wouldn’t have to go out and catch dinner, which was awful hard for it now. The hawk landed near the bobcat and told it about his brother, and how cruel he was. So the bobcat said, ‘Why not give him the land for the day? Here’s what you can do.’ The bobcat told him how he could turn into a rabbit, but a very strong rabbit no hawk could hurt.”

  “Wily bobcat,” the old man said, smiling.

  “ ‘You mean, my brother wouldn’t be able to catch me?’ the hawk asked. ‘ ’Course not,’ the bobcat said. ‘And you can teach him a lesson. You’ll tussle with him, scare him real bad—show him what tough animals there are on the land he wants. Then he’ll go away and hunt somewheres else.’ The hawk thought that sounded like a fine idea. So he let the bobcat turn him into a rabbit, and he hopped back to the land and waited in a patch of grass. Sure enough, his brother’s shadow passed by soon, and then he heard a swoop and saw the claws held out. So he filled himself with being mad and jumped up and practically bit all the tail feathers off his brother. The hawk just flapped up and rolled over on the ground, blinking and gawking with his beak wide. ‘Rabbit,’ he said, ‘that’s not natural. Rabbits don’t act that way.’

  “ ‘ ’Round here they do,’ the hawk-rabbit said. ‘This is a tough old land, and all the animals here know the tricks of escaping from bad birds like you.’ This scared the brother hawk, and he flew away as best he could and never came back again. The hawk-rabbit hopped to the rockpile and stood up before the bobcat, saying, ‘It worked real fine. I thank you. Now turn me back, and I’ll go hunt my land.’ But the bobcat only grinned and reached out with a paw and broke the rabbit’s neck. Then he ate him, and said, ‘Now the land’s mine and no hawks can take away the easy game.’ And that’s how the greed of two hawks turned their land over to a bobcat.”

  The old woman looked at me with wide baked-chestnut eyes and smiled. “You’ve got it,” she said. “Just like your uncle. Hasn’t he got it Jack?” The old man nodded and took his pipe from his mouth. “He’s got it fine. He’ll make a good one.”

  “Now, boy, why did you make up that story?”

  I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “It just came up.”

  “What are you going to do with the story?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that question, either.

  “Got any other stories in you?”

  I considered, then said, “Think so.”

  A car drove up outside, and Mom called my name. The old woman stood and straightened her dress. “Follow me,” she said. “Go out the back door, walk around the house. Return home with them. Tomorrow, go to school like you’re supposed to do. Next Saturday, come back, and we’ll talk some more.”

  “Son? You in there?”

  I walked out the back and came around to the front of the house. Mom and Auntie Danser waited in the station wagon. “You aren’t allowed out here. Were you in that house?” Mom asked. I shook my head.

  My great aunt looked at me with her glassed-in flat eyes and lifted the corners of her lips a little. “Margie,” she said, “go have a look in the windows.”

  Mom got out of the car and walked up the porch to peer through the dusty panes. “It’s empty, Sybil.”

  “Empty, boy, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t inside.”

  “I could hear you, boy,” she said. “Last night. Talking in your sleep. Rabbits and hawks don’t behave that way. You know it, and I know it. So it ain’t no good thinking about them that way, is it?”

  “I don’t remember talking in my sleep,” I said.

  “Margie, let’s go home. This boy needs some pamphlets read into him.”

&
nbsp; Mom got into the car and looked back at me before starting the engine. “You ever skip school again, I’ll strap you black and blue. It’s real embarrassing having the school call, and not knowing where you are. Hear me?”

  I nodded.

  * * *

  —

  Everything was quiet that week. I went to school and tried not to dream at night and did everything boys are supposed to do. But I didn’t feel like a boy. I felt something big inside, and no amount of Billy Grahams and Zondervans read at me could change that feeling.

  I made one mistake, though. I asked Auntie Danser why she never read the Bible. This was in the parlor one evening after dinner and cleaning up the dishes. “Why do you want to know, boy?” she asked.

  “Well, the Bible seems to be full of fine stories, but you don’t carry it around with you. I just wondered why.”

  “Bible is a good book,” she said. “The only good book. But it’s difficult. It has lots of camouflage. Sometimes—” She stopped. “Who put you up to asking that question?”

  “Nobody,” I said.

  “I heard that question before, you know,” she said. “Ain’t the first time I been asked. Somebody else asked me, once.”

  I sat in my chair, stiff as a ham.

  “Your father’s brother asked me that once. But we won’t talk about him, will we?”

  I shook my head.

  * * *

  —

  Next Saturday I waited until it was dark and everyone was in bed. The night air was warm, but I was sweating more than the warm could cause as I rode my bike down the dirt road, lamp beam swinging back and forth. The sky was crawling with stars, all of them looking at me. The Milky Way seemed to touch down just beyond the road, like I might ride straight up it if I went far enough.

  I knocked on the heavy door. There were no lights in the windows and it was late for old folks to be up, but I knew these two didn’t behave like normal people. And I knew that just because the house looked empty from the outside didn’t mean it was empty within. The wind rose up and beat against the door, making me shiver. Then it opened. It was dark for a moment, and the breath went out of me. Two pairs of eyes stared from the black. They seemed a lot taller this time. “Come in, boy,” Jack whispered.

  Fireflies lit up the tree in the living room. The brambles and wildflowers glowed like weeds on a sea floor. The carpet crawled, but not to my feet. I was shivering in earnest now, and my teeth chattered.

  I only saw their shadows as they sat on the bench in front of me. “Sit,” Meg said. “Listen close. You’ve taken the fire, and it glows bright. You’re only a boy, but you’re just like a pregnant woman now. For the rest of your life you’ll be cursed with the worst affliction known to humans. Your skin will twitch at night. Your eyes will see things in the dark. Beasts will come to you and beg to be ridden. You’ll never know one truth from another. You might starve, because few will want to encourage you. And if you do make good in this world, you might lose the gift and search forever after, in vain. Some will say the gift isn’t special. Beware them. Some will say it is special, and beware them, too. And some—”

  There was a scratching at the door. I thought it was an animal for a moment. Then it cleared its throat. It was my great aunt.

  “Some will say you’re damned. Perhaps they’re right. But you’re also enthused. Carry it lightly and responsibly.”

  “Listen in there. This is Sybil Danser. You know me. Open up.”

  “Now stand by the stairs, in the dark where she can’t see,” Jack said. I did as I was told. One of them—I couldn’t tell which—opened the door, and the lights went out in the tree, the carpet stilled, and the brambles were snuffed. Auntie Danser stood in the doorway, outlined by star glow, carrying her knitting bag. “Boy?” she asked. I held my breath.

  “And you others, too.”

  The wind in the house seemed to answer. “I’m not too late,” she said. “Damn you, in truth, damn you to hell! You come to our towns, and you plague us with thoughts no decent person wants to think. Not just fairy stories, but telling the way people live and why they shouldn’t live that way! Your very breath is tainted! Hear me?” She walked slowly into the empty living room, feet clonking on the wooden floor. “You make them write about us and make others laugh at us. Question the way we think. Condemn our deepest prides. Pull out our mistakes and amplify them beyond all truth. What right do you have to take young children and twist their minds?”

  The wind sang through the cracks in the walls. I tried to see if Jack or Meg was there, but only shadows remained.

  “I know where you come from, don’t forget that! Out of the ground! Out of the bones of old wicked Indians! Shamans and pagan dances and worshiping dirt and filth! I heard about you from the old squaws on the reservation. Frost and Spring, they called you, signs of the turning year. Well, now you got a different name! Death and demons, I call you, hear me?”

  She seemed to jump at a sound, but I couldn’t hear it. “Don’t you argue with me!” she shrieked. She took her glasses off and held out both hands. “Think I’m a weak old woman, do you? You don’t know how deep I run in these communities! I’m the one who had them books taken off the shelves. Remember me? Oh, you hated it—not being able to fill young minds with your pestilence. Took them off high school shelves and out of lists—burned them for junk! Remember? That was me. I’m not dead yet! Boy, where are you?”

  “Enchant her,” I whispered to the air. “Magic her. Make her go away. Let me live here with you.”

  “Is that you, boy? Come with your aunt, now. Come with, come away!”

  “Go with her,” the wind told me. “Send your children this way, years from now. But go with her.”

  I felt a kind of tingly warmth and knew it was time to get home. I snuck out the back way and came around to the front of the house. There was no car. She’d followed me on foot all the way from the farm. I wanted to leave her there in the old house, shouting at the dead rafters, but instead I called her name and waited.

  She came out crying. She knew.

  “You poor sinning boy,” she said, pulling me to her lilac bosom.

  C. J. Cherryh (1942– ) is an American writer who began publishing novels with Gate of Ivrel and Brothers of Earth in 1976, leading her to win the 1977 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She began writing at the age of ten and has written more than eighty books so far. One of her first published short stories, “Cassandra” (1978), won the Hugo Award, and she won further Hugos for Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988). Cherryh is a lover of cats and will often travel with them. In addition to traveling, Cherryh is also an avid figure skater and amateur archaeologist. “The Dreamstone” first appeared in the anthology Amazons! (1979) and is included in The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh (2004).

  THE DREAMSTONE

  C. J. Cherryh

  OF ALL POSSIBLE PATHS to travel up out of Caerdale, that through the deep forest was the least used by Men. Brigands, outlaws, fugitives who fled mindless from shadows…men with dull, dead eyes and hearts which could not truly see the wood, souls so attainted already with the world that they could sense no greater evil nor greater good than their own—they walked that path; and if by broad morning, so that they had cleared the black heart of Ealdwood by nightfall, then they might perchance make it safe away into the new forest eastward in the hills, there to live and prey on the game and on each other.

  But a runner by night, and that one young and wild-eyed and bearing neither sword nor bow, but only a dagger and a gleeman’s harp, this was a rare venturer in Ealdwood, and all the deeper shadows chuckled and whispered in startlement.

  Eald-born Arafel saw him, and she saw little in this latter age of earth wrapped as she was in a passage of time different than the suns and moons which blink Men so startling-swift from birth to dying. She heard the bright notes of the harp which ja
ngled on his shoulders, which companied his flight and betrayed him to all with ears to hear, in this world and the other. She saw his flight and walked into the way to meet him, out of the soft green light of her moon and into the colder white of his; and evils which had grown quite bold in the Ealdwood of latter earth suddenly felt the warm breath of spring and drew aside, slinking into dark places where neither moon cast light.

  “Boy,” she whispered. He startled like a wounded deer, hesitated, searching out the voice. She stepped full into his light and felt the dank wind of Ealdwood on her face. He seemed more solid then, ragged and torn by thorns in his headlong course, although his garments had been of fine linen and the harp at his shoulders had a broidered case.

  She had taken little with her out of otherwhere, and yet did take—it was all in the eye which saw. She leaned against the rotting trunk of a dying tree and folded her arms unthreateningly, no hand to the blade she wore, propped one foot against a projecting root and smiled. He looked on her with no less apprehension for that, seeing, perhaps, a ragged vagabond of a woman in outlaws’ habit—or perhaps seeing more, for he did not look to be as blind as some. His hand touched a talisman at his breast and she, smiling still, touched that which hung at her own throat, which had power to answer his.

  “Now where would you be going,” she asked, “so recklessly through the Ealdwood? To some misdeed? Some mischief?”

  “Misfortune,” he said, breathless. He yet stared at her as if he thought her no more than moonbeams, and she grinned at that. Then suddenly and far away came a baying of hounds; he would have fled at once, and sprang to do so.