At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

by Kij Johnson

  “Well?” The dark bartender slaps a glass onto the walnut bar in front of Bob.

  “What?” he says, startled. The bar used to be—something else, he thinks. The man snorts impatiently.

  The people reflected in the mirror—what sex are they? Bob turns to look. It’s very hard to tell. The men—the ones dressed somewhat like men, anyway—are rather small and fine-boned, and the women—or the ones dressed in corsets and such—seem fairly large. They lounge on what are now aqua leather couches, move across what is now pale gray carpet.

  “What can I get you?” The bartender doesn’t sound the least curious.

  Bob licks his lips, which are suddenly dry, and turns around. The man now has a blond moustache that curls up at the tips. His skin is very pale.

  “Didn’t you used to be darker?” Bob asks.

  The man snorts. “What’re you drinking?”

  “Gin and—I don’t even know where I’m drinking.”

  Now clean-shaven and dark-skinned, the bartender walks away. “But my drink—” Bob starts.

  The bartender picks up another glass.

  Bob looks down and there is a glass of oily clear fluid on the bar, which is now chrome dully reflecting the blue-and-silver wallpaper. Bob squeezes his eyes shut.

  “I know, it’s strange.” The voice in Bob’s ear is calm and slightly amused. A cool hand touches his wrist. “The first visit is very unsettling. You have to figure out what you know and then you’ll feel better.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Bob says, eyes still closed.

  “There’s always a bar.” The voice sounds as though it’s cataloguing. “There is always a mirror. The seating is always in the same places. It changes, though, which can be upsetting if you’re sitting on it. The beds upstairs—they stay. Well, of course they would. We are a whorehouse. Members of the staff change a bit, but after a few visits you’ll be able to recognize most of us most of the time. It’s not so bad. Open your eyes.”

  “Where am I?” Bob asks.

  “La Boîte.” The voice sounds amused. “C’mon.”

  Bob slits one eye at his drink. The bar is walnut again but his drink is still clear. He picks it up, lifts it to his mouth. The gin is sharp and spicy, ice-cold. He gasps a little and opens his other eye. A mirror: yes. The people are still reflected in it. Or Bob thinks so; they could be different people. The aqua couches with the blue walls; when he blinks, yes, red armchairs again with the flocked wallpaper. Next to the cash register on the bar is a card with the Visa and Mastercard icons on it and in handwriting beneath them: cash or charge only—no checks! The cash register doesn’t change, he notes.

  “Feel better?”

  Bob does feel better. He takes another drink—still gin, still ice cold, still a little like open-heart massage—and eyes his reflection. Still Bob. He turns to the person who’s been speaking to him.

  She—if it is a she—is a redhead, with a smooth flat haircut that stops at her strong jaw line. She’s wearing a fur coat, apparently with nothing else. Bob gets glimpses of peach-colored skin and downy blond hairs where the coat falls away from her thigh. In her left ear she wears a single earring, a crystal like a chandelier’s drop. Her? Hot, he thinks, if it’s a woman.

  “I’m Jacky,” she says and holds out her hand. It seems big for a woman’s hand but maybe a little small for a man.

  “Bob,” Bob says. “Um, where exactly am I? You said but I didn’t quite… .”

  “La Boîte.” She picks up a stemmed glass filled with something pink. “ ‘The Box.’ Ha ha, right? One of the Boss’s little jokes.”

  “The Boss?”

  “Mr. Schrödinger.” Jacky tilts her head to one side so that her earring hangs away from her face. It’s in her right ear now.

  Bob clenches his eyes shut again. “Jesus Christ.”

  Jacky’s voice continues. “It’s your first time, poor thing. No one’s explained any of this, have they?”

  “Just go away. You’re all some sort of dream.”

  There is a sound that might be a fingernail pushing an ice cube around a lowball glass. “Well, you know about the cat, don’t you? Everyone does. She’s around but we can’t let her into the bar because of health regulations. So,” she says, and she sounds like she’s spelling something out to a slow child. “This. Is. The. Box.”

  Bob maneuvers the glass he still holds to his lips and drains it. Still gin. He glances sidelong at Jacky. Earring in the left ear. Was that where it was last time? The gin is making itself felt. “This is like limbo?”

  Jacky shrugs and the fur slips fetchingly, briefly exposing a smooth shoulder, broad but still well within range for a woman. “It’s a lot more like a whorehouse. I’m thirsty.”

  Bob leans across the bar and taps the bartender on the shoulder.

  Jacky sips something pink from her full glass.

  “Jesus, how do you guys do that?” Bob asks. “It was empty a second ago.”

  Jacky smirks. “It both was and was not empty. It partook of both states at once.” She holds up her hand as Bob opens his mouth. “I don’t understand it either, so don’t ask me. Look at your glass. Empty or full?”

  Bob looks down. “Empt—No, it’s—” he stops.

  “Don’t think too much. Take a sip.”

  Bob sips. Gin. He gulps. When his eyes have stopped watering, he says, “This is all pretty confusing.”

  “That’s okay. Are you interested in going upstairs?”

  His cock hardens when he thinks of it. But the broad shoulders, the big hands—“Uh, no thanks.”

  She pouts. “Are you sure? If you would prefer someone else, perhaps we can—”

  “No,” Bob says and swallows hard. “No, I like you fine, I like you best of everyone here, you’re very, uh, attractive. But I think my type is more, well, feminine.” The earring has changed places once more, he’s positive of it this time. That long neck … He’s getting hard again and hopes she won’t notice.

  But she slides her hand down his belly, cupping his cock through his jeans in her broad fingers. The pressure makes his heart skip a beat. “I thought you preferred me?”

  It’s getting difficult to think. “Well, what are you?”

  Jacky laughs something that would be a giggle if Bob were a little more sure of her gender, and drops her fur from her shoulders. Her skin is smooth and she is moderately muscled, with small nipples half-erect in the air. Jacky has soft ash-blonde pubic hair, with a small trail of fur leading down from her navel. What Jacky doesn’t have is sexual characteristics: no penis, no breasts, no labia. She’s—Bob’s not certain of that she again—too muscled to look comfortably feminine, too smooth to be really male. “I might be either. It changes.”

  Bob can feel himself shriveling, looking at her. “How can you do this?”

  “I can be whatever I want here,” Jacky says. “How often can you say you have that choice? Back out there, would you fuck a man?”

  “No,” he admits. “Would I be fucking a man?”

  “Maybe. What’s inside the box? Me. And I could be a pussy, or I could be a pistol.” She leans forward until her face is inches from Bob’s. Her breath is warm against his lips, “Either way, I’ll be the best fuck you’ve ever had.”

  “All—” Bob stops and clears his throat. “Can we go upstairs now?”

  Jacky leads him up a broad flight of stairs lavishly ornamented with statuary depicting fauns and satyrs being ravished by nymphs—or is it the other way around? Bob’s looking at Jacky, cannot wait to pull aside that coat and do whatever it is they’re about to do. Jacky keeps moving up the stairs, pulling him along by the fur that he is trying to pull off Jacky.

  He pulls Jacky close at the door to a room, kissing hard, Jacky’s body pressed against him, the flatness of chest and silky skin stretched over hard muscle, a hand sliding under his belt flat-palmed against his belly, moving down until his rigid cock throbs. Bob fumbles the door open and they cascade into a room that might be red or m
ight be honey-colored. They pull apart for a second. Jacky drops the fur coat. At the sight of the body Bob hesitates again.

  “What’s wrong?” Jacky says, moving to stand chest to chest with him. Jacky is just his height.

  “I just wish I knew what you are, that’s all.”

  Jacky laughs once, a low bark. “Except you never do know. You only think you do.”

  The bus accelerates until Bob can see around it. The box from the post office lies in his lap, its flaps folded closed. Rain’s smearing the windshield. Bob adjusts the timer and turns on the headlights before he remembers the whorehouse. The bar that kept changing, Jacky and that strange conversation, and the room—So which was she—he?

  Bob’s most of the way to Brighton Beach before he figures it out. The Box is closed, after all.

  Chenting, in the

  Land of the Dead

  In the end, the only job that presented itself was the governorship of a remote province in the land of the dead. Chenting was the name of the place, and the scholar and his concubine Ah Lien talked of it often as they lay entangled in their sweaty robes after lovemaking.

  It would be a place of fields, he said. The peasants will farm rice and raise oxen. The air will smell a bit like the smoke from the false money that is burned to give one influence among the dead; but it will also be rich with perfumes, the scents that only dogs and pigs can smell in this world.

  No, she said. It shall be like distant Tieling, where the fields lead up to the mountains, except that the mountains will never stop but will go up and up; and gray snow shall blow like dust across the fields, and the sky will be the purple-black of a thundercloud’s heart or a marten’s wing. And it will be lonely, she said, and held him tighter, pressing her face against his neck.

  He was dying; they both knew that. The man with the eyes of smoke, the man who had come to tell him of the post at Chenting, had said so.

  “But I am waiting to hear how I performed at the examinations!” the scholar had said to him. “I was hoping for a position somewhere.”

  The man bowed as he had at the start of the conversation: as before, the bow seemed both perfunctory and punctilious. “And well you might hope. Hope is the refuge of the desperate. But please allow me to be candid here. You are poor, and cannot afford the bribes or fees for anything better than, let us say, a goatherdship. And this governorship in Chenting, in the land of the dead, is available immediately.”

  The scholar stroked his chin. “But I am not dead.”

  “You shall be soon enough,” the man said. “It is as certain as, well, taxes.”

  The scholar frowned. “Are there no other candidates for this position, that you seek a living man to fill it?”

  “As I have said, you shall not live many months longer, making this point moot.”

  “Well then, are there other dead candidates?—Or soon to be dead,” the scholar added.

  “Well, yes, there are always candidates. But I feel sure that your qualifications shall prevail.” The man with eyes of smoke made a gesture like two coins clinking together.

  “But—” the scholar began and stopped. “I must consult.”

  The man bowed yet again and left.

  “Well?” the scholar said to the empty room. There was a soft brushing of fabric and Ah Lien glided from behind the patched screen with the painted camellias. She was better than he deserved, the lovely Ah Lien, with eyes as narrow and long and green as willow leaves, better than he could afford, except that her birth was common and the eyes were considered a questionable asset for a woman in her position.

  “You heard,” he said. A statement, not a question. Of course she had heard. She was one ear, he was the other.

  “Chenting,” she whispered. “In the land of the dead. When must you leave, my lord?”

  And that was that. There was no choice about his dying, only about his position in the scheme of things after his death, and both knew it was better to be a dead governor than a dead scholar.

  But he lingered for a time with her, and they talked often of Chenting.

  The governor’s palace, he said, will be built of white stone and then plastered over, so that even where the plaster has cracked the walls will glow like bleached silk. And the roof will be covered with ceramic tiles the color of daylilies. The gardens will have countless enclosed roofless areas, each filled with hanging baskets containing small pines whose needles chime when one passes.

  No, she said, the gardens are cold and abandoned. Winds blow through the empty rooms, and sometimes one sits by an unglazed window, watching the patterns made by dead leaves blown in the air.

  It cannot be like that, he said. It must be as I see it.

  If it is, she murmured, summon me to your side and I will come.

  They had already decided she could not accompany him. The man with eyes like smoke had said nothing of her, and Ah Lien was understandably reluctant to die. She loved the scholar dearly but she had aging parents to consider and an ancestral shrine to tend. Still: she was willing.

  His death when it came was a comparatively simple one. He coughed a bit as the winter began to take hold. Ah Lien held him close and warmed him when chills shook him. Then they talked of Chenting.

  The bedrooms of the governor’s palace, he said, and paused to catch his breath. The bedrooms have braziers of porcelain shaped like horses, and each horse bears a silver saddle on its back, and each saddle holds a fire of charcoal. The smoke that curls up smells of sandalwood and jasmine. And the bed is soft, covered with silk, with pillows carved of black wood. And the pillow book there has positions we have never imagined.

  No, she said, the beds at Chenting are cold and narrow and hard, made of wheat husks in hemp bags. The smoke smells of funeral biers, but the fires are cold and colored the blue of foxfire in the marshes at night. “Do not leave me, my love,” she said.

  “I will send for you,” he promised, and died.

  When he awakened in Chenting he was amazed at first at how well he felt. There was no pain, no trouble breathing, no aches from holding a brush too tightly or walking in new shoes. And Chenting was everything he had imagined and more. The fields were lusher than he had expected and seemed to be near harvest. The air smelled as rich as he had dreamed. And he had much money to spend, for Ah Lien had sold her hair ornaments to buy paper money, and burnt it so that it would follow him.

  He missed her and wanted her beside him, and since Chenting was warm and beautiful and not like the cold visions she had feared, he sent a message to her. “Come,” it read. “I have seen Chenting and it is as fair as I envisioned. The birds are the colors of flames, and their songs are sharp as the crackling of fire. Come sit beside me.” He sent a messenger off, with an entourage to show her the honor she deserved.

  The messenger returned. “She is coming,” he said.

  Many days later, the entourage at last arrived, brilliant with tassels, loud with flutes. The governor of Chenting straightened his cap and calmed his heart, and descended the red stairs leading to the courtyard where his entourage milled about the sedan chair he had sent for her. He brushed aside the chair’s gold-thread curtain. “Ah Lien—” he began.

  For an instant he heard Ah Lien sobbing, and then that was gone. The sedan chair was empty and silent.

  The governor of Chenting stormed and raged and ordered great punishments for the entourage that had failed to keep her safe. But even as he wept and cursed, he knew what had happened.

  He had found Chenting just as he had expected, a place where an old man’s pains were eased. But she had imagined another Chenting, a place where youth is irrelevant and even beauty is lonely. He did not know the Chenting she had gone to, but he knew it was not his.

  The Empress Jingu Fishes

  The empress Jingu fishes. The little mountain stream before her is fast but smooth, and clear enough that she can see a trout near the bottom, though it is nearly hidden by tree shadows above and the busy pattern of the river bed below: gold and r
usset and gray rocks, waving tangled weeds. The trout does not see her, or does not care whether she sees it, only hovers there, as unconcerned and self-absorbed as the gods.

  She is not hungry for she has just eaten. Beside a small slender stone as long as her thumb is a tipped cedarwood box. Cooked rice spills from it, the remains of her meal. She picks up the stone and tucks it into her sash. She will need it later, and it will be just the right size and shape. Jingu knows this as clearly as she knows the death-name of the unborn son in her belly or the date of her own death, forty years from now. Past and future are equally immediate to the gods, and thus to her, their shaman, to whom and through whom they speak.

  Half a year from now, she will be in the kingdom of Silla on the Korean peninsula, completing a task the gods have set her. It will be bitterly cold, a pale-skied day with snow in the air. Though it will be six months before she sees it, she knows that Silla’s capital is built on the Chinese plan, its walls twenty feet high and roofed with tile to protect the city against flaming arrows, roads from the gates scattering across a treeless plain—the perfect place for her to draw up her troops. Though she is pregnant with her son, who will be due—and overdue—by then, Jingu is on horseback at their head, dressed in armor, her long hair tied close in a man’s style. Her bow lies across her horse’s neck and she runs a crow-feathered arrow between her fingers. She longs for the Sillans to attack, longs for their king to open the gates of the capital and ride out to meet her. She has wanted this since her husband Chuai died. The gods demanded he take Silla; when he refused they killed him. She cannot avenge herself on the gods, but aches to kill someone, anyone.

  That is half a year from now. Now, this instant, she looks at the trout suspended in water as clear and cold and pitiless as the future.

  Eight years ago. Jingu is to be married. She kneels on a litter hung so heavily with silk and paper and tree branches that she can see nothing, but she sees anyway. She is carried through the emperor’s temporary palace; though it is only a month before they move to their next home, the many wood-and-plaster buildings are solidly constructed, with graceful tall roofs. Her husband the emperor will be called Chuai when he is dead. This is his name to her even now, before she has seen his face—though she must remember to address him as “husband” or “your highness.” The future is uncomfortable enough to a woman who is born to it, and she knows already that he will be afraid of the gods that speak through her, that he will ignore them and die.