Clockwork Phoenix 3: new tales of beauty and strangeness

by Mike Allen

  And he waited.

  And Eve did not come.

  All nights end, and all dreamers awake sooner or later. With so sign of Eve, and the cafe fading into mist around him, Clancy reluctantly left the dream, a profound sense of unease tugging at his very soul. If Eve would not, or could not, come to him, then clearly he had to find her. As a dull ache throbbed deep within him, he accepted that the time for pretenses and playacting was over. Slowly, unwillingly, the Lord of Dreams raised his Aspect, shrugging off that fragile mask of humanity he’d adopted for dealing with mortals, and then he went for a walk.

  For three days and nights, Clancy walked through dreams. On the first day, he explored the dreams of mortals, touching upon them as they slept, looking everywhere for the missing Eve. Steadily, methodically, he explored them all, young and old alike. In his wake, he left unsettled sleepers and crying babies, inexplicable bouts of insomnia and night terrors, far too intent on his quest to be gentle. Still, there was no sign of Eve, no trace of her passing. She was not to be found in any of the dreams they’d visited in the past.

  On the second day, Clancy took his search into the dreams of the Mysteries, all of those strange and supernatural beings who chose to live unseen amongst an unknowing humanity, or in hidden pockets tucked away in strange corners of the world. Here, too, he had no luck, though he tore through protections and wards designed to protect their casters from nocturnal intrusions. Even those who feared nothing else were disturbed by the careless, uncaring way in which the Lord of Dreams bullied into their privacy and moved on. Mystics and psychics, shapeshifters and monsters, they all shared the same experience, and all they knew was that Clancy sought something without success. But Clancy did not care to explain himself, or even look back, since they could not lead him to Eve.

  On the third day, Clancy stepped outside the world proper, into the restless dreams of the Earth itself. Here dwelt the Inverse Ones, unspeakable and alien, forever exiled from the mortal world and perpetually trying to force their way back in. Here he moved with care and grace, picking his way cautiously, for he and the Inverse Ones were of an equal power; they were older, but weakened by their long absence from the waking world. Only a thin truce kept things civil, so he did not overstay his welcome, remaining only long enough to ascertain that even in this place, there was no sign of Eve.

  On the fourth and final day, Clancy grew desperate, the repeated failures of his search eating away at his patience. He journeyed to the farthest reaches of his realm, where the membranes between worlds are at their thinnest and sleep is forever intertwined with death. He raised his hand to tear down the walls and boldly invade the kingdom of no return, but was stopped, a mighty Presence blocking his way with a great shadow and a thunderous whisper. As Clancy protested, the voice spoke to him, the words quiet and implacable. It spoke of pacts and powers, boundaries and responsibilities. It murmured disapprovingly of souls kept past their time, of arrogance and trespasses, of prices and penalties. When Clancy disregarded this, powerful wings buffeted him back, dancing swords of fire making it quite clear he would not invade the realm eternal. Such was not for him, the Lord of Dreams.

  The voice faded to nothing, leaving Clancy alone in the grey depths of his despair. Like one of the travelers through his realm, he woke to see what he’d missed before: a dark figure moving through dreams as his shadow. The presenter who’d unveiled a secret ingredient of sweet potatoes. The speakeasy’s bartender. A hollow-eyed drummer at the concert. The flame-snorting, bat-winged equine in the zoo. That final waiter at the resort hotel. There, out of the corner of the eye at every turn, flitting past, immediately forgotten. Subtle and omnipresent. And Clancy knew as though the story unfolded before his eyes. A young woman, daisy-blonde and blue-eyed, with soft features, lying still and absent in a Des Moines hospital, her mind cut loose to drift on the winds of his realm. A friendship evolving into courtship, then into love affair. Their relationship allowed to progress under the shadow of dark wings. A figure visiting the young woman. Fingers brushing her eyelids, arms gathering her up, taking her away at last.

  Clancy had been too late. Had he reached out to her, rendered her a thing of dreams, taken her into his world for good just one day sooner, and untouchable…no. Even he could not challenge this power, which ultimately claims all who dream.

  Clancy’s grief exploded across the world, millions of people startling awake with a palpable sense of loss and longing for something they couldn’t identify. Parents rushed to comfort children, lovers clung to one another for reassurance, dogs howled, and for a night, the world mourned without knowing why. For those who’d known the young woman, he shared just a fraction of the joy he’d once felt with her, and they knew she’d been loved by something great and powerful.

  He returned to his work. The waking world soon forgot about that night of grief and despair.

  One day, Clancy grew lonely.

  It was a Monday, for such things always happen on Mondays, it seems, when he had an idea. Long-legged and long-fingered, he stalked through a thousand dreams, gathering a wisp here and a wisp there. He wove them together with delicate, painstaking care, adding a cat’s breath, a child’s laugh, a raindrop’s touch, a dandelion’s puff. He gave his creation a mother’s love and a father’s protection, a sibling’s tolerance and a friend’s rivalry, a teacher’s admiration and an enemy’s respect. He shaped and molded according to his memories, stepping back when he was satisfied with the results. And yet, it was not what he had imagined. Like a dream, it had changed without rhyme or reason.

  This one was in her late twenties, a dark-eyed brunette with long curls and lush curves, dressed in blue jeans and a green Tuesday University sweatshirt. Her eyes fluttered open with the spark of life as Clancy watched, and she looked ever so out of place, lost and bewildered. Wrapped in his mortal persona once again, Clancy slowly approached, exuding an air of comfort and reassurance. The woman looked to him, hope and confusion warring in her expression. She felt so strange, she admitted. She had no idea where she was, or how she’d come there. She didn’t even remember who she was…but for some reason, she knew she could trust him. Were they friends?

  A shadow swept over them, a cloud blocking the sun in a sky lacking both clouds and sun. Clancy, gaze intent upon the young woman, did not notice. He smiled gently at her, and in a manner suggesting easy familiarity, said, “Your name is Eve.”

  HELL FRIEND

  Gemma Files

  You could make paste for Hell stuff from flour in a pinch, but it didn’t burn as well and customers didn’t like the smell, which even incense wouldn’t cover. Jin-li Song bought three unmixed boxes for five bucks at the Dollar Store—just add water—and negotiated her way back out, threading a narrow path between teetering wicker receptacles of every given size stuffed haphazardly in/on top of each other and piles of open boxes packed full of Fung’s Gold Rosette soap, scented sandalwood, rose or jasmine.

  Outside, the air reeked like smeared goose-shit, pressing down with a palpable weight. It almost hurt to breathe as Jin drifted back slowly, through Chinatown’s sluggish, skipping heart. The smells of home were everywhere, thick enough to slice: Dhurrian and fire-works gunpowder, dried persimmon, pickled ginger, red bean jelly. The stiff stock and vinegary dyes of Hell Money. The sweet stink of joss-sticks. Kuan Yin and the Monkey King staring down, smiling and glaring. The Zodiac’s animals, rat to pig and back again, contorted in red lacquer poses.

  And since it was the last week of Zhong Yuan Jie, after all, getaia were indeed everywhere, just as her Ah-Ma had warned her—blooming in every doorway, on every porch and corner: Little shrines, wilting plates of food, smoking joss-sticks. Passersby whose ages ranged from roughly eight to eighty swirled carelessly around them, wearing brightly colored clothes designed to insulate their chi against the streets’ death-heavy atmosphere; everywhere Jin looked, people (maybe tourists, maybe not) could be seen laughing, dancing and singing to entertain whatever ghosts might be lurking—resentfully,
implacably, invisibly—in their immediate vicinity.

  Step lightly, Jin, Ah-Ma would say if she was here, and even if she wasn’t. This is a time of confusion, in which every decision—no matter how well-intentioned—may bring harm…less a celebration than an inconvenience, even to we who honor it. The doors of Hell stand open, letting the dead back up onto the earth. And so, though we may make money from Hungry Ghost Month, it is Hell Money only…

  Yeah: Hell cash, thick and crisp and useless; only fit to spend in Hell, by those who lived there—or rather, who didn’t. And this was what Jin’s Ma spent her days cobbling into commissions, stuff made expressly to burn, falling down through the fire to give some lucky ancestor’s ghost a big surprise—Hell cars, Hell fridges, Hell air conditioners. Hell cellphones.

  While up here above, there was no buying a new house, no renovating the old one, no going on vacation or hanging at the beach, for fear of ghosts luring you down into the water…

  Jin stopped short in front of the Empress’ Noodle Restaurant, between its flanking totem dragons, and bent over for a minute, rummaging for her inhaler. Inside, framed by the front window’s fever-red rows of halved pigs and Peking duck-flesh, Mrs. Yau—the Empress’ owner—sat alone at her usual table near the back, playing mah-jongg with herself. A cup of green tea steaming at one elbow.

  Her name is Yau Yan-er, was all Ah-Ma had said the first time she’d caught Jin studying her, out of the corner of one eye. You don’t ever go in there, wei? Don’t speak to her, don’t look at her…

  Why not, Ah-Ma?

  Ah-Ma had sighed. Because. People like us—we don’t want people like her to even know we’re here. It’s safer, that way.

  Sometimes, like now, Jin wondered exactly what Mrs. Yau must have done—what she must be—to have become “people like her,” in Ah-Ma’s eyes. From the outside-in, at least, she seemed perfection itself, a T’ang Dynasty screen-painting come to graceful life—regally slim, black hair tamed into an elaborate, chopstick-skewered crown, veins showing faintly green as milky jade beneath the pale skin of her long-fingered hands…

  …and her eyes, black stones, raising suddenly from a cast-down fistful of Plum Blossom, Knot, the Centre, White…to meet with Jin’s own, through the glass. Faint twitch at the temples, those high, nude arcs where her eye-brows ought to be; she raised one palm slightly, a subtle yet unmistakable gesture of beckoning. Jin coughed on the draw, tucked her inhaler away again, and stared: You mean me? NOW?

  Apparently, yes.

  But: Don’t look. Don’t speak. NEVER go in.

  Waaah, Jin thought. I’m thirteen, for God’s sake. I’ll do what I want, this one time. If not now, when?

  When indeed.

  Jin straightened, touched her hair lightly, then gave up on getting it to look any better than it already did. Shrugged Ah-Ma’s voice away, like a horse switching flies—

  —and opened the door.

  * * *

  Though the summer job she’d lined up to start a week from now would officially be her “first,” Jin’d been an unpaid worker in Ah-Ma’s Gods Material Shop pretty much ever since she, Ba, and Ma had come over from Taiwan, when Jin was five. Which meant she could reckon Federal and Provincial tax in her head, make chit-chat in enough other dialects to deal with people who didn’t speak Cantonese (or English), and locate back-stock items without checking the book (mostly).

  But none of this impressed Ah-Ma enough to stop her from taking Jin—and Ma—off the floor whenever she could; though she often said it was because Jin’s Ma was “so good!” in the workshop that she wanted Jin to pick up her skills, Jin suspected different.

  “Ma,” Jin had overheard her Ba saying that afternoon, quietly, as she let herself in by the delivery door, “you have to stop. Eun-Joo is Asian as you or me…”

  “Not like you and I, and you know it. What good does it do to pretend?”

  “That’s just…insanely racist, even for you. Besides which, you do get that if my wife is unacceptable, that makes Jin at least half-unacceptable, right?”

  “Ai-yaaah! You know I love Jin, but things will be hard enough for her, without drawing attention. How can she ever make a good marriage? So tall, with so much color in her skin? And her face, so long—like a melon!”

  At this, Ba had huffed, and fell straight back into Cantonese: “Wan jun, Ma! Dim gai lay gum saw?” Which would surely have brought on an exchange too quick for Jin to completely follow, given how red Ah-Ma’s face went, if they hadn’t both suddenly spotted Jin where she stood, rooted to the spot by throat-roughening embarrassment.

  Ba coughed, looking down. “Uh…Ma’s not back yet, ah bee. You could start setting up, I guess…”

  Ah-Ma nodded. “Best, yes. Do you have enough paste?”

  “I think I forgot,” Jin said. “I could…go and get some.” As Ba reached for his wallet: “No, I can…I’ve got it. No problem.”

  And: “Watch out for getai,” Ah-Ma told her, as she turned. “Remember, mind where you step. Don’t get in any ghosts’ way. It’s their time—they expect politeness.”

  Jin’s mind raced, a thousand replies suggesting themselves: Wish I was a ghost, uppermost. But it wasn’t even vaguely worth the trouble, considering that come tomorrow, they’d all still have to live together.

  So she nodded instead, avoiding Ba’s sad eyes: “Wei, Ah-Ma.” Bowing her too-long melon head, pulling in her too-long limbs, crushing down her too-tall half-Korean self in general —almost to “normal” height, or close as she could get—as she went.

  * * *

  Inside the Empress’ Noodle, meanwhile, everything was cool and dim. Mrs. Yau flicked shut once more the same hand she’d used to entice Jin closer, a five-fingered fan, and nodded to the chair at her left elbow; as she did, red-shaded lantern-light glinted off nails grown just a half-inch longer than anyone Jin had ever seen before wore theirs. Jin nodded back without thinking twice, and found herself already sitting.

  “Ni hao, mei mei,” Mrs. Yau said, her Cantonese softened by a wind-through-willows shading of Mandarin. “What is your name, please?”

  “Jin-Li Song.”

  Mrs. Yau pursed her soft lips, disapprovingly. “Song Jin-Li-ah, ai-yaaah. Don’t your parents know enough to teach you how to properly say your own name?”

  “Well, uh…that’s how we say it at school, so…”

  Another nod. “So. How they say it, the long-noses. But mei shi, never mind. Perhaps this is only proper, given the age we live in: Two names for two different worlds—one for use amongst the gweilo, the barbarians, and one to use here, amongst ourselves. Still, one cannot live in two places at the same time, wei?”

  “…no?”

  “No.” She peered closer at Jin then, eyes narrowing further. “You must be Song Pei-Pei’s granddaughter, I think.”

  At the sound of Ah-Ma’s “real” name, Jin lowered her head, blushing once more. “Wei, Mrs. Yau.”

  “And how does her business flourish? Very well, I’m sure, this time of year.”

  Jin didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. It was true that Gods Material Shops often stayed open around the clock during Hungry Ghost Month; only a year ago, when Ah-Ba was still alive, they’d probably have set money aside to hire extra help. Now it was just them—Ba and Ah-Ma out front, Ma and Jin in the back. And she was wasting time dawdling here, under Mrs. Yau’s unreflective gaze—her eyes that took everything in, gave back nothing…

  A small nod, as though Jin’s silence constituted a valid answer. Mrs. Yau tapped the tablecloth between them, just once. Asking—

  “Do you know this design, Song Jin-Li-ah?”

  “Sure: Yin-yang. Right?”

  “Yes. See how it is: One here, one there. They twine around each other, mix together—a little spot of yin in yang, a little spot of yang in yin. Yin is female, dark, cool; yang is light, hot, male. Yang acts. Yin is. Both are necessary. The building blocks of the world—without both working at once, in harmony, the mechanism no longer functi
ons cleanly. But there is another thing too, something you don’t see here…it may be inside, or outside, or invisible. Yomi. Hell. Ten thousand kinds of Hell. Another thing to thank the long-noses for. Yomi is what’s hidden, what lies beneath. It is not for you. Not for anyone, unless…what time is it now, Jin-ah?”

  “5:45…oh, I’m sorry. Hungry Ghost Month.”

  “Yes. So be careful, mei mei—little sister. Careful of what you see, and what you don’t. Because this month, what is hidden becomes revealed; what was obscure becomes obvious, without warning. Consider this my gift to you, and come back later on, perhaps, once my advice has been of some use. You may even call me Grandmother, if you wish.”

  Jin frowned, studying the odd curl of Mrs. Yau’s tiny pink smile across her pale, pale face, and feeling as though the dim red world around her had somehow begun—almost imperceptibly—to swim.

  With effort: “But—you’re not old enough to be anybody’s grandmother.”

  The smile widened, pink deepening. And: “Oh, I am old enough to be your grandmother’s grandmother, child,” said Mrs. Yau, without much emphasis. “Old enough to be everyone’s grandmother.”

  “You’re not a ghost, are you?”

  “Ah, no.” But here Mrs. Yau bent her beautiful head, and took a single sip of tea from her thumbnail bone-china cup, adding—

  “I am far worse than that.”

  * * *

  Read the Ullambana Sutra, was all Ah-Ma said, when Jin first asked her where the idea for Hungry Ghost Month came from, exactly. But Ba, knowing she never would, had been the one to paraphrase: How one time, long ago, there was a guy who ran away from home to hang with Buddha and become a monk—Maudgalyayana, that was his name. After he attained enlightenment, he looked around to see what his parents had been doing in the meantime, and found his father in heaven. His mother, though…