“Best Sam, what’s afoot?” Martin asked.
“I have to see Lucius again, Martin! I need to ask him something!”
“About your interview?”
“About my gift.”
“Then I’m sure he’ll see you.”
And Lucius did, almost immediately. Martin needed only a moment to go in first to explain, then Sam was ushered into the leather chairs, and Martin was once again closing the door behind him.
Sam dropped into the armchair opposite Lucius, just as he had an hour before.
Lucius had already put aside the book he’d been reading. “What is it, Sam?”
“I know how I can give you my magic.”
“You do? And so?”
“I want to.”
“I thank you. How does that work then?”
“You tell me what you want me to do. Then I do it for you.”
“But I can’t,” Lucius said.
“What’s that?”
“I can’t come out and tell you, Sam. It’s an oath I took. A condition I imposed on myself. A rule of governance from way back. I’m not allowed to tell. It all has to come from you. You’re the Magikker-in-command right now. I’m just an illusionist.”
“But you can hypnotize me. Plant an activating command of some kind. Then instead of days and weeks of learning how to use an activation spell one time only, you put in a trigger so all I have to do is say what I want. What I think you want. You can at least do that.”
“True. I can. I’ve done it before.”
“I know. I guessed. That’s what you’re the expert at. Making it quick and easy. Helping it happen.”
Lucius smiled. “So how do we proceed, Best of Sams? I still can’t say what I want you to do with your gift.”
“Lucius, I think I know what you want.”
Lucius’s eyes glittered with unreadable emotion. “Oh? Yes?”
“So go ahead. Plant the hypnotic cue.”
“I planted it earlier today. While you were watching my burning city there.”
Sam glanced quickly at the strange shape turning in the fireplace, then looked back. “Then call the Dessida staff together.”
Lucius’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “The staff?”
“The three teachers too. All of them. Have them gather out by the front steps.”
Lucius turned to an intercom by his chair, pressed a button. “Martin. Dessida One! Ring the bell!”
And moments later the bell in the tower started tolling over and over. Out in the fields, back in the kitchen and service rooms and private quarters, the household staff would be leaving off what they were doing and heading for the front of the house.
They were all assembled there when Lucius and Sam stepped through the big double doorway at the top of the steps. The group stood as if for some anniversary photograph, smiling, attentive, and curious, Martin Mayhew and Ren Bartay among them.
Sam grinned back. He was right. In an instant he’d counted them and knew he was right.
Eight household staff. Three teachers. A total of eleven.
Eleven of the twelve plinths.
Sam gestured then, just as he’d seen magicians and wizards and sorcerers do all his life in countless picture books and movies.
“Make room for number twelve!” he shouted. “Rufio, come out here! It’s your turn!”
There was scratching and scrambling in the thicket, then out came Rufio, already in house fatigues, limber and strong and smiling with happiness.
“Welcome to the staff, Rufio!” Sam called.
“Thank you, Best Sam!” Rufio called back with his brand-new voice, and did just that, moved in among the others.
That was when Sam noticed that next to him Lucius was weeping, that tears brightened his cheeks in the late-morning light.
“Thank you, Best Sam. Thank you for this.”
“It means I’ll have to stay on and become an illusionist now, doesn’t it?” Sam said.
“Oh, it does,” Lucius agreed. “And I’m sure that’s what Rufio and our friends here want more than anything.”
The Magic Animal
GENE WOLFE
Gene Wolfe is perceived by many critics to be one of the best—perhaps the best—SF and fantasy writers working today. His most acclaimed work is the tetralogy The Book of the New Sun, individual volumes of which have won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He followed this up with a popular new series, The Book of the Long Sun, that included Nightside the Long Sun, The Lake of the Long Sun, Caldé of the Long Sun, and Exodus from the Long Sun, and has recently completed another series, The Book of the Short Sun, with the novels On Blue’s Waters, In Green’s Jungles, and Return to the Whorl. His other books include the classic novels Peace and The Devil in a Forest, both recently rereleased, as well as Free Live Free, Soldier in the Mist, Soldier of Arete, There Are Doors, Castleview, Pandora by Holly Hollander, and The Urth of the New Sun. His short fiction has been collected in The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, Gene Wolfe’s Book of Days, The Wolfe Archipelago, the World Fantasy Award–winning collection Storeys from the Old Hotel, Endangered Species, Strange Travelers, and Innocents Aboard: New Fantasy Stories. His most recent books consist of a two-volume novel series, The Knight and The Wizard, a new collection, Starwater Strains: New Science Fiction Stories, and the long-awaited new entry in the Soldier of the Mist sequence, Soldier of Sidon.
In the strange and evocative story that follows, he takes us into the deepest recesses of a mystic wood and involves us anew in one of the oldest of stories…
VIVIANE could understand the speech of animals. That is the thing you must know about her, not the first thing, or the main thing, or the most important thing. Nor is it the only thing. It is the thing you must know. You must know it because you cannot understand it. Viviane—here she comes, the brown-blond not-terribly-large girl urging the dappled mare to more speed—did not understand it herself.
She did not understand it, although she did not put it that way. When she thought about it, she could not understand why other people could not—which is the same thing. That is the way it is with talents. One has a talent for music, another for baseball. One has a talent for acting. (You know her.) Another can fill the whole auditorium with the song from one little ordinary-looking throat. And none can ever understand why others cannot do the things they find so easy and natural.
Viviane understood the speech of animals, and sometimes (quite often, in fact) animals understood her. That last is not equally mysterious. Animals often understand us, and Viviane’s talent is not so rare as you might imagine.
The dappled mare jumped a little creek in fine style and came to a full stop without being told; and Viviane, who had been enjoying the song the wind sang and thinking about starting high school next month way over in Rio Colorado, tried to see what had made her stop. Without success.
“That is a drawing-in wood,” Daisy said very plainly. “I’m not going in there.”
“All right.” Viviane made her voice soothing. “I wasn’t going there anyway.”
“I am not,” Daisy said.
It did not quite follow, or so it seemed to Viviane. “You sound,” she told Daisy, “as if I said I was. I didn’t say that at all. I said I wasn’t.”
Daisy only tossed her head nervously.
Viviane tapped her with her heels. “This trail doesn’t go there, and you’ve been over it lots of times. Let’s trot.”
“Let’s not.”
“Trot,” Viviane repeated.
“It’s not the same, that wood.”
“Trot!”
Daisy trotted, then broke into a thrilling headlong gallop.
This, Viviane told herself, is what getting the right boyfriend—not just any boyfriend, the right one—for my freshman year would be like. A rush and rhythm. A sort of—
Daisy had stopped again, this time as abruptly as the very best roping horse. Viviane was c
onscious of flying, of spinning, and of nothing much after that.
THEN of lying in coarse grass in an uncomfortable position. For a time that seemed long, she could not think what she might do about it.
At last she sat up and rubbed her head. No bones broken, as well as she could judge. Her watch—a big, tough quartz watch her father had given her for camping—seemed intact, its pink plastic case undamaged, its hands pointing faithfully: 1:27.
“You will be going into the wood,” a dusty rattlesnake told her, “and I will come with you and protect you, if you like. I could wrap myself around your right arm.”
Viviane spat dirt and a few grass fragments. “You scared Daisy.”
“Would you like to be stepped on?” The rattlesnake had coiled itself defensively. “By a horse?”
It had a point, and Viviane decided to change the subject. “I understand animals,” she said. “I always have, but they’ve never talked quite like you.”
“Pity,” said the rattlesnake.
“Usually it’s ‘I’m tired,’ ‘I’m afraid,’ or ‘I like you.’ Snapdragon told me how much she loved her kittens once. Things like that.”
The rattlesnake rested its chin on a shiny stone, not quite looking up at Viviane. “Now you may understand us better. It is because of where you will be.”
“Where I’ll be?”
“Yes.”
“Not where I am now?”
“No.”
“All right.” Viviane’s jeans were dirty; so was her denim shirt. She brushed them off. “Where will I be?”
“In the wood. Shall I come, too?”
“No.” She tried to make her voice firm.
“If you don’t like the wrist idea, I could stretch around your waist, I think.”
“If I say no again, will you bite me?”
“I will say it for you,” the rattlesnake told her. “No, but remember that you might have had the blessing of serpents.” It flowed into the grass and vanished.
Viviane stood, finding it more difficult than usual. The trail stretched before her and behind her, but she could no longer remember where it came from or where it led. The wood—a beckoning wood of pine and scrub oak that stretched up the side of the mountain—promised shade and cool water.
It took her some time to trace the little creek to its spring, a small and secret pool whose outflow was quickly lost among rocks and roots. She had drunk and was perched on a rock wiping her mouth with her bandana when a shrill voice behind her said, “There you are! They said you had come. We need your help. Nod, please, so I will know my speech is not too alien to you.”
Viviane turned and stared.
“Oh, nod! Please, please nod!”
Slowly, Viviane did.
“There! I knew you would!” The speaker was a small…Woman? With four gauzy wings that fluttered nervously behind…Her? “We need your help,” she(?) said. “You need your help. Am I making myself clear? When I say we I mean us. Do you understand the Matter of Britain?”
“Sorry I stared.” Viviane did her best to look away, with mixed success. “I’ve never seen anyone quite like—never seen anybody even a little bit like you.”
“I understand. If…You’re not going to attack, are you?”
That took some digesting. Viviane composed several interesting thoughts and rejected all of them; everything, she decided, was already much too complicated. At last she said, “You’re afraid of me? You are afraid of me?”
“Well, you are big. And I am certain you can spring very fast…” The wings fluttered so hard that for a moment their owner was lifted off her feet. “If you chose to.”
Viviane felt she should show her teeth but smiled instead. “You mean like Snapdragon? Snapdragon’s my cat. I call her Snappy.”
“Are cats the ones with tails? My name is—is…Oh, I forget! I mean, they gave me something to tell you, I know they did. Ariel? Was that it?”
“She’s a mermaid, I think. She has lovely red hair.” Viviane smiled, recalling the movie. “I’d like to have it on DVD.”
“You don’t think that’s right?”
“I really don’t.” Viviane shook her head. “You’re more of a fairy, aren’t you? And you’re a girl? Like me?”
“Only not so big.”
“So you should have a girl-fairy name. What about Tinker Bell?”
The wings drooped, and their owner looked a trifle downcast. “It is awfully long. I doubt I could remember it.”
“Well…” Viviane dipped her bandana in the spring and wiped her face with it. “Gee, I read—”
They had been joined by a coyote. It nodded frostily to the (very) small winged woman before addressing Viviane. “This ladybug, or whatever she is, is about to dispatch you upon a mission fraught with danger, my child. You may need the assistance of someone swift, someone with sharp teeth who is not afraid to use them. I proffer my services, gratis. Pro bono, as the expression is. I too have a stake in this matter, you see. Do you wisely choose to accept them?”
“I—I’ve never shot one of you.” Viviane found that her mouth was dry and wished she might drink from the spring again. “I want to say so, first off. It’s the truth. There’ve been times when I could have.”
“So you think,” remarked the coyote.
“But I—I…” Viviane turned to the small woman with wings. “Please—my gosh, I still don’t know your name. When I was little I read books about fairies. Now I can’t remember them. Wait. Nimue’s one. Do you like it?”
“That is you, I believe.” The small woman giggled.
“No, I’m Viviane.”
The coyote made her a stiff bow. “I am He Who Dismays All Hounds. You may call me Dis.”
“I don’t want to call you.”
“You probably like dogs,” Dis said, wagging his tail somewhat awkwardly. “You humans do, far too often. I despise them, but I’ll be a dog for you. For you alone.”
“No!” Viviane shook her head violently.
“As you wish, Viviane.” The coyote drew himself up. “You might have had the blessing of the pack. I sincerely hope you will not come to regret having refused it.” He turned and trotted away, vanishing (as it seemed) behind the first rock.
Viviane watched until he had gone, then knelt to drink again.
When she stood up, the (very) small winged woman said, “Viviane, Viviane, Viviane! How pretty!”
“Thank you.” Viviane dipped her bandana as she had before; the cold water revived her flushed face.
“I will be Viviane, too!”
“That’s me. How about Vivien?” Viviane spelled it, and added, “Nobody can tell them apart anyway.”
“I was told about you before I came,” Vivien said, “but not half enough. Your minds are so, um, like clouds. It makes me awfully dizzy.”
Why it’s Alice in Wonderland, Viviane told herself. That was a good book, and a good movie, too. How did it go? “I’m mad, you’re mad, we’re all mad here.” That was it, or close.
“I am not mad at anybody.” Vivien sounded as firm as it is possible for a small woman with gauzy wings to sound. “I am hopeful. Very hopeful indeed. We need you. You need you. You called me a fairy. Would you like me to grow the little horn-things?” Her tiny forefingers, smaller than a baby’s, wiggled on either side of her forehead.
“Well, those…”
“Like a snail, you know? I think I could do it.”
“Please don’t.” Viviane wiped her face with her damp bandana all over again. “I was sort of enjoying this, and I’m afraid it would scare me.”
“We almost always do.” Vivien hung her head. “We never mean to. Or not usually. But you call us gnomes, brownies, leprechauns, sprites, Martians, pixies, and elves, ever so many awful names we have no title to. And you are afraid of us no matter what you call us.”
“I’m not afraid of you.” Viviane made it as firm as an almost-high-school student and accomplished horsewoman could make it.
“Really?”
The small woman appeared to draw a deep breath, taking in at least half a teaspoon of air. “You say we steal children. We never do. I promise. I will swear to that by anything you like. By everything.”
“I am not a child!”
“But sometimes we recruit children. We simply have to. Honestly, Viviane. In the end we will give him back to his mother. Or to you. Whichever comes first.”
“I’m sure I don’t want him.”
“You will. But—but you have got to recruit him for us. The first part. Bring him to us, but make sure he doesn’t have any iron on him when he comes. Or steel. Or anything like that. It distorts the field.”
“But I’ve…” Viviane paused, looking blank.
“No, you don’t.”
“Wait! My pocketknife.” Viviane thrust her hands into her pockets. “It’s gone. It must have fallen out when I fell off.”
“See?” Vivien looked pleased. “You’re not wearing spurs today—”
“I don’t need them with Daisy.”
“And the rivets in those blue trousers are copper. The change in your pockets is copper and nickel. You can talk to animals, so naturally you can talk to me. And you’ll do it. I know you will.”
“Do what?”
A big raven landed between them with a distinct thump. “Take the kid,” it told Viviane. “You take, they teach. After that, you keep the kid on track.” Its voice was a harsh croak.
The small woman said, “Hello, Nevermore.”
“Wait just a minute.” Viviane looked from one to the other. “You two know each other?”
“Sure,” quoth Nevermore.
“He…” The gauzy wings fluttered nervously. “You must understand him. I, well—he…”
“He don’t work for free.” Nevermore cocked his head knowingly at Viviane. “That’s what she’s tryin’ to say.”
Viviane nodded. “I’ve got it.”
“Swell. Now you listen up, honey, ’cause I’m only goin’ to say it once. I been here before, an’ all this she’s goin’ to get you to do ain’t goin’ to be half as easy as she lets on. With me on board there’ll be two of us, an’ I been through the mill a couple times already, see? You want me, fine. We’ll talk about it. You don’t, I’ll split now an’ no hard feelin’s. Only don’t call me when you’re in the soup, ’cause I don’t carry no cell phone.”
Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy Page 38
