by Neil Gaiman
Three kids passed above us on the bridge, shouting and running.
“I’m a troll,” whispered the troll, in a small, scared voice. “Fol rol de ol rol.”
He was trembling.
I held out my hand, and took his huge, clawed paw in mine. I smiled at him. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Honestly. It’s okay.”
The troll nodded.
He pushed me to the ground, onto the leaves and the wrappers and the condom, and lowered himself on top of me. Then he raised his head, and opened his mouth, and ate my life with his strong sharp teeth.
§ § §
When he was finished, the troll stood up and brushed himself down. He put his hand into the pocket of his coat, and pulled out a bubbly, burnt lump of clinker rock.
He held it out to me.
“This is yours,” said the troll.
I looked at him: wearing my life comfortably, easily, as if he’d been wearing it for years. I took the clinker from his hand, and sniffed it. I could smell the train from which it had fallen, so long ago. I gripped it tightly in my hairy hand.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Good luck,” said the troll.
“Yeah. Well. You too.”
The troll grinned with my face.
It turned its back on me and began to walk back the way I had come, toward the village, back to the empty house I had left that morning; and it whistled as it walked.
I’ve been here ever since. Hiding. Waiting. Part of the bridge.
I watch from the shadows as the people pass: walking their dogs, or talking, or doing the things that people do. Sometimes people pause beneath my bridge, to stand, or piss, or make love. And I watch them, but say nothing; and they never see me.
Fol rol de ol rol.
I’m just going to stay here, in the darkness under the arch. I can hear you all out there, trip-trapping, trip-trapping over my bridge.
Oh yes, I can hear you.
But I’m not coming out.
VAMPIRE SESTINA
I wait here at the boundaries of dream,
all shadow-wrapped. The dark air tastes of night,
so cold and crisp, and I wait for my love.
The moon has bleached the colour from her stone.
She’ll come, and then we’ll stalk this pretty world
alive to darkness and the tang of blood.
It is a lonely game, the quest for blood,
but still, a body’s got the right to dream
and I’d not give it up for all the world.
The moon has leeched the darkness from the night.
I stand in the shadows, staring at her stone:
Undead, my lover . . . O, undead my love?
I dreamt you while I slept today and love
meant more to me than life—meant more than blood.
The sunlight sought me, deep beneath my stone,
more dead than any corpse but still a-dream
until I woke as vapour into night
and sunset forced me out into the world.
For many centuries I’ve walked the world
dispensing something that resembled love—
a stolen kiss, then back into the night
contented by the life and by the blood.
And come the morning I was just a dream,
cold body chilling underneath a stone.
I said I would not hurt you. Am I stone
to leave you prey to time and to the world?
I offered you a truth beyond your dreams
while all you had to offer was your love.
I told you not to worry, and that blood
tastes sweeter on the wing and late at night.
Sometimes my lovers rise to walk the night . . .
Sometimes they lie, cold corpse beneath a stone,
and never know the joys of bed and blood,
of walking through the shadows of the world;
instead they rot to maggots. O my love
they whispered you had risen, in my dream.
I’ve waited by your stone for half the night
but you won’t leave your dream to hunt for blood.
Goodnight, my love. I offered you the world.
WEBS
IN THE WEB-COVERED HALLS OF THE KING OF THE SPIDERS, Lupita spent a most memorable year. She had servants in attendance upon her, and a jerkin covered in chryolanths, a present from the King. Lupita was a guest of one of the Dark Lords, although nobody seemed to know which one; it was the subject of much court speculation:
“Today, milor’ Lupita abased herself perhaps a trifle too low before Lord Caryatid.”
“Ah, but yesterday she was seen publicly to ignore Lord Tistatte, and on one of the dark days: surely there is a sign of favour?”
“Or of other protection. Perhaps she is in lien to one of the Lords of shifting position . . .”
And all would be silent, and watch Lupita as she walked across the hall, strands of webbing adhering to her cape and drifting behind her like fronds of plants from the Slow Zone: old man’s folly, perhaps, or tiger-whiskers, a plant spoken of in the classics as possessing certain unusual properties, although no one today knew or cared what they were.
It was the uncertainty about Lupita’s status that had kept her safe from court intrigues; for, after all, no one would dare to risk their status on a cheap guess. Blood was the Dark Lords’ tithe from those who worshipped them, and few were overly eager to hasten communion by involvement in the complicated and shifting game the Lords played. Instead they mirrored it, or thought they did, aped what they presumed they saw, with their petty little cliques, and their treacherous little factions.
Although the webs did much to mute sound in the endless corridors of the Palace of Spiders, there was always a soft susurrus, a sly whispering asalliances were formed, the hiss of betrayals discovered and bought, the kiss of character assassination (and possibly of assassination of another kind, for sometimes bodies could be seen lolling high in the webs of the halls, wrapped around in pale silken strands like empty insects in some old larder, although no one ever climbed the webbing to find out who it was that had been left there. The bodies were always gone in a week, or two at most).
In her time in the palace Lupita formed a number of oblique liaisons, but took no sexual partners, something which somehow was no surprise to anybody.
There was much that Lupita did to surprise, however.
She once went out hunting, and brought back a mammal, alive.
The King, before whom it was unveiled, said nothing, but signalled with a staff to the Chamberlain, who enquired:
“It is?”
“A cat, my Lord Chamberlain.”
“And does it make good eating?”
(There was a ripple of appreciation at that: the Chamberlain had punned most elegantly, such that her words had also meant, And is it given to men to eat their Gods? and also, Unravel this and we shall rejoice.)
“No, my Lord Chamberlain, I do not believe that it does.”
The animal stayed with her after that for many weeks. Then one morning, when mist hung low on the banqueting chamber and formed beads of moisture on the crouching iron bodies of the Dark Lords, the body of the cat was to be seen hanging some forty feet above the ground, in the webs, not far from Lupita’s chambers.
A small crowd gathered.
Lupita rose at her usual hour. She came out of her chambers, but when she saw the crowd, and when she realized what they were looking at, she turned, with no expression, and went back in through the door from which she had come.
When she returned, about thirty minutes later, the crowd had swelled to almost a score of courtiers, and an equal number of others.
Lupita carried with her a basket containing a filled waterbladder, several small dry rolls, and some crystallised fruit. The black of her cloak had been replaced by a rich crimson, and she had placed a knife in her belt.
She took a crossbow from one of her servants, and aimed it at the mammal’s wrapped body. T
he bolt made no noise when it struck home, trailing a thin thread behind it.
Lupita tied the thread around her thumb, then sat, cross-legged, on the floor of the corridor, and waited.
The crowd stared at her, enraptured, waiting with amazement for her next trick. It was all so new, so daring. Someone at the back began to applaud, swallowing gulps of air and belching loudly, but the noise was quickly shushed.
By the time the stone was struck for evening meal, the last onlooker had given up, and wandered off. Lupita was still waiting, sitting in the shadows, pale eyes gazing up at the shrouded body.
When the last stone was struck for deep night a servant came by and replaced the food and water Lupita had consumed on her vigil.
On the third night it seemed to Lupita almost as if the servant were about to speak to her, but the servant did no such thing. So Lupita spoke to the servant.
“Do you know what I will find?”
The servant shrugged.
“Do you care?”
“It is,” admitted the servant, “not something that will affect my lot one way or another.”
Lupita nodded dismissal, and the servant backed away.
It is said that at that time Lupita slept, and dreamed a dream. But a dream is a private matter, and we shall not concern ourselves with it. Be that as it may, Lupita was either woken, or not woken but alerted, an hour after this, by a tugging on the thread about her thumb. Looking up she could just make out the cat-cadaver lurching up the web. She let out loops of thread from her thumb, like someone coaxing a nervous kite to fly, until she saw the shape vanish in the webbing, pulled inside by a dark and spindly limb.
It was then that Lupita hand-over-handed up the web (which would have caused apoplexy, and perhaps a chorus of eructation, had an audience been there to observe), trying, and not altogether failing, to move at random, as if she were merely a rip in the net, old bones and gnawed skulls slipping and shifting from the turbulence in the web caused by the recent passage of the cat.
She waited near the spot where the mammal’s body had vanished, until the thread was tight around her thumb (which she could feel was losing feeling), then she let out the last couple of loops, and pushed into the web. Strands of the stuff stuck to her eyelashes, her face, her hair. She screwed her eyes together tightly, then pulled her cloak in front of her face, and moved forward into the space.
She had expected a tunnel.
Instead she found herself disoriented, moving through something that felt like a waterfall, but which was composed of light and something else, not matter. It seemed like something was brushing her lightly from the soles of her feet to her head. It tickled, but it was a tickling inside, not outside, not on her skin.
Her eyes were still tight shut, but colours formed inside them, seeping like river mists of blue, of green, of peach and viridian, then exploding like fire inside her head.
She said nothing, and was still. When her inner world had calmed down she lowered her cloak, and opened her eyes. The world had turned silver: lights shone silver from mirrored panels, illuminated silver switches and buttons, cast silver reflections on silver surfaces and spilled to the silver floor around dark grey shadows.
In a corner, next to a vast metal ship, its silver sails fluttering in a nonexistent breeze, sat two huge spiders, white spots on splotchy brown abdomens; angular knobby-jointed legs waving gently in the air; emerald eyes gleaming with hunger and greed.
They had divided the cat between them, and were eating it in a most unpleasant fashion.
Lupita pulled her knife from her belt, and threw it at the largest of the spiders, hitting it in the abdomen. White stuff began to ooze from the cut, dripping onto the metal floor. The creature ate on, not noticing the wound, not even when the pale substance (in appearance, Lupita observed, somewhere between pus and jelly) oozed as far as the cat, and the spider continued its meal with itself as sauce and condiment.
Since her knife attack had done no apparent good, Lupita slowly began to circle the spiders, walking as quietly as was possible. She circled them once, twice, three times, then she ran, hard, as fast as she could toward a far wall.
She turned around, and winced. The thread had performed its function, but while one of the spiders—the one with the wounded belly—had been neatly sliced in two, yellow organs swimming in mucus now slipping and spilling onto the floor, the other had been less fortunate. The thread had slid down, so that, instead of encircling the body, it had merely noosed the legs. The final tug had pulled seven of the eight legs off, and they lay stiff and ghastly on the ground, stacked up like dreadful brushwood against the spider’s shivering body. The last leg twitched and spasmed, spinning the spider around on the silver floor.
Lupita went close enough to it to retrieve her knife, then, keeping well clear of the mouth, which was opening and closing in impotent and silent fury, she slit the creature’s belly wide open, with a cry,
“Haih!” and jumped back, pulling up her cloak as she did so to avoid the tumbling organs splashing it.
She tried to untie the thread from her thumb, but it had been too tightly wound for too long, and her thumb was blue and cold. The thread had been pulled too tight to untie and was too tough to cut, although she produced a respectable amount of blood in trying.
In the end she had to cut the thumb off. She cauterised it in spider-spit, which took away the pain and stopped the bleeding, although it made her feel strangely distant, as if she was not participating in her life, but was merely an interested spectator, watching her own actions from over her shoulder. This feeling, which was new to her, was to recur several times in later life.
She wiped the knife on her leg, returned it to her belt, and climbed out the way she had come.
The next day it was observed that neither the King nor the Lord Chamberlain were to be found in the palace environs; however this realization was rapidly overshadowed by the discovery that a certain antique Dark Lord had gone into fugue, and was apparently blown out.
It was widely assumed that Lupita had cut off her thumb in order to appear mysterious, and the court, unable to cope with further mysteries, agreed to find this in faintly bad taste.
Worse was to follow:
That evening Lupita left the palace. Before she went, as she passed through the hall of the Dark Lords, she was seen to stroke the casing of the Lord-in-fugue.
The court gathered in an observation tower to watch her leave; they stared after her until she had crossed the borderline and was lost in the mists; but the sky remained curiously free from lightning, there were no awful screams or terrible cries, and the earth did not part and swallow her up.
They went back to their halls feeling slightly let down. Later they polished the Dark Lords: Iliaster and Baraquely, Zibanitu-tula, Ettanin, Bodstieriyan, and the rest.
It was then that one of the lesser courtiers was foolish enough to be heard praying that Lupita be punished for her lack of respect. Prayers of any kind were anathema to the Dark Lords, and he was turned to twisted stone where he stood.
The people waited for their king and his chamberlain to return to them.
The webs collapsed and rotted in the halls near to where Lupita (now just an enigmatic memory) had had her chambers. But other webs were being spun; they were all over the palace, if you knew where to look for them.
SIX TO SIX
“OH, don’t do nightspots,” says My Editor, “someone’s already done them. Can you do somewhere else?”
I crumple up a carefully planned evening that takes in every London nightspot I’ve ever been to and a few I haven’t. Fine. I’ll just play it as it comes, then. Maybe hang around the West End streets. I tell her this.
She seems vaguely concerned. “Be careful,” she warns. Warmed and heartened, pondering imaginary obituary notices, and adventures ahead, I stumble out into the late afternoon.
Six till six.
6:00 I’m seeing my bank manager. We’re standing out in the hall, discussing the use o
f the word fucking in contemporary magazine articles. I tell him I can use fucking in Time Out whenever I want, at which point someone with a suit glides out of an office and stares at us. The tinkling laughter of his singular secretary, Maggie, follows me as I flee.
I try to get a cab at Baker Street, but the yellow ‘TAXI’ light, holy grail of London emergencies, proves usually elusive. I tube to Tottenham Court Road, where a queue of taxis lurk, yellow lights blazing.
Head down to the basement of My Publishers, make some phone calls, stumble over the road to the Café München in the shadow of Centre Point, where I drink with Temporary Crisis Editor James Robinson, awaiting the arrival of My Publisher.
My Publisher is late but I bump into huge rock star Fish (late of Marillion); we haven’t seen each other for years, and catch up on recent events, interrupted only by a shady-looking fellow who’s setting up ‘the biggest charity in England’ and wants Fish to lend support, and a prat who asks Fish to write out the lyrics to ‘Kayleigh’ on a napkin so he can win a £50 bet. Fish says he can’t remember them and sends the guy away with an autograph. Still, somebody made £50 off of it.
My Publisher turns up, and we head off to grab something to eat (La Reach in Old Compton Street, great couscous), promising to meet Fish later in the new, moved Marquee. He’ll put our names on the door.
11:15 We turn up at the Marquee to be met by “Sorry mate—we closed at 11:00”. When I was a teenager the Marquee (possibly the cheapest sauna in the metropolis) scarcely opened before eleven. Dreams of a peculiar rock-n’-rolloid night vanish. I still don’t know what I’m going to be doing this evening.
My Publisher is heading down to Wimbledon to try and fix an antique laserdisc player he’d sold to an old friend. I go with him.
1:00 Laserdisc player still doesn’t work, which means my publisher is unable to view Miami Spice (“Those Miami Spice girls sure have a nose for torrid trouble . . . a porno pool party . . . our passionate policewomen are ready for the big bust . . .” Fnur fnur).
1:30 Driving back into town through empty Wimbledon we get pulled over by a police car—they’ve noticed the antique laserdisc player in the boot, and have leapt to the not unreasonable conclusion that My Publisher is in fact a burglar. Nervously he hides Miami Spice under the seat, gets out of the car, hands the cop his mobile phone and tells him to phone people to prove his identity; the cop stares at it wistfully. “They won’t even give us one of those,” he sighs. He asks My Publisher about his (Barrow in Furness) accent and announces that he comes from Bridlington himself. Waves us on our way. My plans of an exciting night crusading against police brutality—or better yet, journalistically, spent in the cells—founder and crash.
