by Kelly Link
Angie smiled, obviously pleased by the question. “When you go through the occlusion,” she said, “when you belong to the place and you can see your way through, the paths aren’t always the same. They can change from walk to walk. It seems like they nearly always differ from person to person. In town, we talk about it. The paths we’ve seen. The parts of the forest.”
Caroline thought of the letters. How she and Shanna had seen different characters between Annual and Apple.
“Can you keep a secret?” Angie asked.
“Sure,” said Caroline.
“Shanna wouldn’t be pleased if she knew.” A conspiratorial smile. Caroline did her best to return it. “Sometimes Jamie or one of the boys from the diner takes me out to the forest. They got a wheelchair they’ll carry me around in, and we’ll go a good way into the woods. Half a mile, mile.” She gripped her walker, winced, stood up. “No matter what it looks like, the path is always worn, like it’s been walked for years, and recently. Come on and see my room.”
Caroline stood up uncertainly. Angie started down the hallway.
“I’ll carry my birdwatcher’s books and my flower guides. Try to identify what I see. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. Last time I went, Roger took me. A windy day toward the end of March. These long-beaked, yellow-breasted birds flitting in the trees, singing. Like big, colorful sparrows. The pines wider and taller than I remembered, roots threading the dirt. The way was bumpy but passable.” She opened the door to the bedroom just a crack. “Don’t let Einstein in.”
Caroline noticed the gray, long-haired cat at her feet. His eyes were locked on the bedroom door. She blocked his way with her leg, gently swept him back and wagged her foot discouragingly as Angie opened the door wider and went inside. Then, carefully, Caroline backed into the dark bedroom herself.
Angie produced a book of matches from the breast pocket of her nightgown and lit two thick, vanilla-scented candles on top of her dresser.
“A quarter mile into the forest,” she said, “we came to a clearing. I could see some shapes moving about in the tall grass, shifting it this way and that like a wind, but the motion seemed contrary to the wind that was blowing. We stopped and watched a moment. Roger suggested we turn around, and then this frenzy bounded out of the grass.”
Angie sat down on her bed with a small groan. The room was small, cozy, and uncluttered, except for stacks of books on the dresser and nightstand. Not a sty, as advertised, but there was an earthy odor that Caroline couldn’t quite place. Angie patted the space beside her on the bed, indicating that the younger woman should sit. Caroline complied, feeling as if she was a teenager about to receive a lecture.
“You know how some groups of birds will fly in fractal patterns? Make those whorls and ribbons in the sky? It was like that, coming out of the grass, this whole geometry playing out on the ground. Dozens and dozens of these little guys. Can you see him?”
She gestured to the easy chair by the bed. On the chair was a small cat carrier. Inside the carrier, an animal the size of a rabbit or kitten, but leaner, lankier. A deer in miniature. It lay on the floor of the carrier, its right forelimb wrapped in what looked like a hardened scrap of a dishtowel. Its flank rose and fell with rapid breaths. Caroline leaned forward to get a better view; the animal’s eyes retracted into the dark.
“I can see him,” she said. Her voice sounded mild in her own ears, merely polite, but she didn’t feel mild.
“They swarmed out of the grass, dozens of them, leaping all over one another, like shoppers in a hurry. They poured down the path ahead of us, and we watched them go. But they left this fella behind. On the ground, panting hard, his leg turned at this just awful angle.”
Again, Caroline wished she had her Moleskine. She wished she had charcoal. She wanted to draw the deer, half in shadow.
“Roger wanted to leave,” said Angie, “but I wouldn’t have it. He is, he was, the sort of taciturn good old boy who ain’t never said no in his life.” She smiled sadly. “He rolled me through the clearing, right up to this guy. There was a March wind blowing, one of those cold winds that could be a breath before spring or forecast of long winter. I wondered if there were frosts and storms in the forest. I’d never seen one, but I imagined the little guy buried in snow. I had Roger lift him as gingerly as he could and lay him in my lap; the poor thing barely struggled. Roger had set a few limbs in his time, on his farm. We brought him here and did our best and wrapped the leg in a cast.”
The deer peered out of shadow. The light of the scented candle glinted in his eye. Caroline thought, I shouldn’t be able to see this. The fauna of an occlusion, someone else’s occlusion, and here it is staring back at me.
“Thank you for showing me,” she said.
“I don’t know what he is, exactly,” said Angie. “I read all around. The closest possibility I can find is prehistoric. Candiacervus ropalophorus. They were native to Pleistocene Crete and had long, branching horns. But that’s not quite right either. Unless this fella’s too young for the horns.”
The room smelled of vanilla. Slowly, trying not to be frightening, Caroline slid off the bed and kneeled on the carpet, staring through the bars of the cat carrier. The deer’s breathing had slowed.
“You hear theories about the forest,” said Angie, “about the occlusions. That something has gone wrong, that we’ve lost or damaged some pillar in the world. And perhaps we have. We’re very good at loss and damage. But,” she leaned forward, her head close to Caroline’s, both of them peering into the cat carrier, “I think it’s something simpler. I think nature is inexhaustible, and there are long cycles in the order of things, long tides that come in and go out. Maybe every hundred thousand years, the system of the world changes, and we’ve only just now had occasion to notice. I love being in a place like that. I want to dwell in the inexhaustibility.”
Inside the carrier, the deer shifted its weight, turned its head to drink from a small bowl of water. This native of someone else’s world, a world she could walk through but couldn’t remember.
“Please,” said Angie, quiet and close to Caroline’s ear, “take care of Shanna. She’s so generous, and she needs someone to take care of her.”
Caroline struggled for the words to measure out an assurance.
Shanna returned with an old wheelchair. She carried it collapsed under her arm, shimmied it sideways through the door and unfolded the wheels and leather in the living room. Caroline sat on the couch with Einstein on her lap. Angie watched her daughter’s work with an expression of patient composure, her mystery still open in front of her.
“Where did you get that?” she asked mildly.
Shanna was still furious. Caroline could hear it in the flatness of her affect.
“Jamie. They’d tried to carry Roger in it when he had his stroke. You all need more wheelchairs here.”
Each word steely and restrained. She’d worked up her anger at Caroline into anticipation of a fight with her mother.
“Ah,” said Angie.
“We’re going to take you home,” said Shanna. “My home. It’s time.”
Angie looked to Caroline, assessing something. Whether she knew Shanna would make this demand, perhaps, whether she was complicit. Caroline wondered what the older woman decided.
“You know my answer,” said Angie.
“I know it and I ain’t going to hear it anymore. Roger seals the deal. You got to be somewhere safe, somewhere you can get care if you need it.”
“I suppose,” said Angie, “I’ve aged out of deciding for myself. I’m no longer allowed to choose home and happiness over safety.”
Her voice remained soft. Caroline could see how Shanna’s blunt mode of anger was derived from her mother’s. There was an alternating current in the small library of a room; Caroline felt the arguments pass through her, back and forth, accruing force.
“I’m not trying to take away your choices, Mama. I’m trying to take care of you. You got to see it’s hard for me to keep doing th
is, coming and going. I worry all the time. I got to schedule my weeks to make trips here, and I got to stay right nearby, I can’t leave for a job or new home or whatever. We’re stuck.”
Angie still held her mystery, unread, as if to refuse the conversation full access to her attention. “Honey,” she said. “Go where you want. Live your life, I mean it. I don’t want to take away your choices. All I ask is that you leave me mine.”
For the first time, her tone took on a stubbornness, almost a petulance. And in the timbre of her voice, Caroline perceived the distance between mother and daughter. Shanna would never leave her mother alone. Angie would never see herself as a responsibility, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be moved, at least until she had chosen to move herself.
And another thing, obvious all at once: Shanna hadn’t expected to persuade her on this trip. Not really. Instead, she’d been trying to show Caroline her battle, her losing battle. Caroline felt her throat tighten. She wanted to reach out and hold Shanna and tell her that she loved her, but Shanna was across the room and angry.
“Tell me what you want to take now,” said Shanna, “and I’ll pack it up.”
“I’m not going.”
“I’ll come back and move whatever I can, but we’ll take your files and any important—”
“I’m not going,” said Angie. “You can’t make me.”
Something seemed to pull taut in Shanna.
“Mama, goddammit, I will pull you out of your chair and put you in this one.”
Shanna took a step toward her mother and the two women watched one another like passersby on a sidewalk, each attempting to evade the other’s path, each trying to measure the way the other might step.
Please, Angie had said, take care of Shanna.
“It’s late,” Caroline interjected. “Maybe we should stay the night and you can talk about this in the morning.”
Shanna turned around, stared incredulously. More disbelieving than angry.
“I think that’s a good idea,” said Angie. “I made up Shanna’s room, I got the bed ready.”
Tomorrow was Sunday. They could see the occlusion in daylight, see one another in daylight, talk about what they would do next.
Shanna seemed to slacken, return to herself. The flatness bled from her face and gave way to tired, frustrated confusion.
Strange, thought Caroline, that you can stumble unmeaning into some sway over a family’s future. It was uncomfortable, almost embarrassing, that such a stumble was possible. She thought, I have to be more careful.
“Okay,” said Shanna, “okay, we’ll stay.”
Another constant: Shanna was exhausted by anger. Or else she slept to escape herself when she was mad. A bit of both, maybe. She locked the door of her childhood room and claimed a corner, where the double bed met the wall. She made a burrito of herself with the covers, leaving space and another blanket for Caroline but not speaking a word. She faced the wall and went to sleep.
There was no way to tell the time. Caroline figured it must be past two. She wasn’t tired. The current of argument had passed through her and left her charged with static restlessness. She sat in a younger Shanna’s fuzzy blue pillow-chair and looked out the window at the neighbor house in the dark. For a few minutes, through the wall, she heard Angie shift about in her room and murmur, perhaps to the Candiacervus ropalophorus. Then Angie fell silent, and Caroline listened to the alien quiet of the house, relaxed into the welcome loneliness of being the only one awake.
This is what she thought would happen: Shanna would be angry, but she would forgive her. She might make another tired effort to persuade her mother, but she would be deflated and uncertain, empty of impetus. Caroline felt sure of this. Whatever pressure had built up in Shanna was now punctured.
After a time, the wind picked up and made a strained music on the roof. Outside the window, the scrappy hedgerow between houses shifted, the motion just visible in the moonlight. Through the wall, Caroline thought she heard a scrabbling of small hooves on plastic, a tinny animal sound, but it might have been the wind, or her mind. She stood up, lay gently on top of the covers of the small bed, and slowly, tentatively, wrapped her arms around Shanna. Tomorrow, they would wake up and walk in the daylit occlusion, talk about what would come next. And for a little while, at least, they would dwell in the inexhaustibility.
About these Authors and Artists
Christopher Brown writes science fiction and criticism in Austin, Texas, where he also practices technology law. He coedited, with Eduardo Jiménez Mayo, Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, which was nominated for the 2013 World Fantasy Award. Recent work has appeared in The Baffler, the MIT Technology Review anthology Twelve Tomorrows, 25 Minutos en el Futuro: Nueva Ciencía Ficción Norteamericana, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Castálida, and The New York Review of Science Fiction.
Dmitry Borshch was born in Dnepropetrovsk, studied in Moscow, today lives in New York. His drawings and sculptures have been exhibited at the National Arts Club (New York), Brecht Forum (New York), ISE Cultural Foundation (New York), the State Russian Museum (Saint Petersburg).
Kelda Crich is a newborn entity. She’s been lurking in her creator’s mind for a few years. Now she’s out in the open. Find Kelda in London looking at strange things in London’s medical museums or on her blog. Her poems have appeared in Nameless, Cthulhu Haiku II, Transitions, and the Future Lovecraft anthology.
Michael J. DeLuca edited this. His fiction has appeared in Clockwork Phoenix, Interfictions, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Betwixt and etc. Try him at @michaeljdeluca.
M. E. Garber grew up reading about hobbits, space-travel, and dragons, so it’s no wonder that she now enjoys writing speculative fiction, and dreams of traveling the world(s). She used to live near the home of Duck Tape, then near the home of Nylabone. Now she lives near the home of Gatorade. You can find her blog at: megarber.wordpress.com
Eric Gregory’s stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Betwixt, and elsewhere. He lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, and co-edits Middle Planet with Julia Gootzeit. For sporadic blogging and super-amateur garden photography, see ericmg.com.
Kevin Huizenga just moved to Minneapolis and is also at usscatastrophe.com. He teaches and is the author of several books of comics, including Curses and The Wild Kingdom.
Nicole Kimberling spent twelve years cooking with wood fire. Now she knows all its dirty tricks. She lives and works in Bellingham, Washington.
Giselle Leeb’s stories have appeared in Bare Fiction, Mslexia, Riptide, and other publications. She grew up in South Africa and now lives in Nottingham, UK, where she works as a web developer when she is not writing. giselleleeb.cielo.net @gisellekleeb
Steve Logan is a self-taught fine artist and also my favorite bro. His work has been shown in cities all over the US, including Miami, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Boston.
Carmen Maria Machado is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, AGNI, The Fairy Tale Review, Tin House’s Open Bar, NPR, The American Reader, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her stories have been reprinted in several anthologies, including Year’s Best Weird Fiction and Best Women’s Erotica. She has received the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, the CINTAS Foundation Fellowship in Creative Writing, and the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship, and has been nominated for a Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and lives in Philadelphia with her partner.
D. K. McCutchen is a Senior Lecturer for the UMass College of Natural Sciences. Lack of poetic DNA led to tale of low adventure & high science titled The Whale Road (Random House, NZ; Blake, UK), which earned a Pushcart nomination & a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book award. In a literary attempt to save the world, she’s now writing mostly scientifically accurate, sometimes erotic, gender-bender-post
-apocalyptic-speculative-fiction. The series begins with Jellyfish Dreaming—finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. She lives on the Deerfield River with two brilliant daughters and a Kiwi, who isn’t green, but is fuzzy.
Alena McNamara lives in Boston and works in a library near a river. Her stories have appeared in Kaleidoscope and Crossed Genres Magazine. She is a graduate of the 2008 Odyssey Workshop and Viable Paradise XV, and can be found online via alenamcnamara.com.
Sofia Samatar is the author of the novel A Stranger in Olondria, winner of the William L. Crawford Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. In 2014 she received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She co-edits the journal Interfictions and teaches literature at California State University Channel Islands.
Peter Jay Shippy’s books of poems include Thieves’ Latin and A Spell of Songs.
Ingrid Steblea’s poetry has appeared in Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Boxcar Poetry Review, Poem, The Seattle Review, The Southern Anthology, and numerous other journals. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and their two children.
Michelle Vider is a writer based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in The Toast, Baldhip Magazine, and Pop Mythology. Find her at michellevider.com.
Deborah Walker grew up in the most English town in the country, but she soon high-tailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner, Chris, and her two young children. Find Deborah in the British Museum trawling the past for future inspiration or on her blog: deborawalkersbibliography.blogspot.com. Her stories have appeared in Nature’s Futures, Cosmos, Daily Science Fiction and The Year’s Best SF 18 and have been translated into a dozen languages.
