by John Grant
"The gown will never come clean," says Fidele. "You'd be better to burn it, or bury it."
"No," she says. "I need the blood still to be there when I return to my father's house, as I shriek and wail and tell them all how thieves set upon my husband and stole the pouch of coins he wore at his belt and the diamond ring from his finger and then slit his throat. After they had gone his loving wife took him in her arms and held him, even though his life had ebbed by then. What must be hidden is not the gown but the pouch and the ring – and the dagger. Would you do this for me?"
"We can only do it together," says Fidele, looking across to where the horses are tethered. The animals are nervous, trying to distance themselves from Posthumus's motionless, prostrate form.
Fidele.
Her perfect lover.
The one who has always been faithful to her. The only one who has not simply tried to use her, in some way or another.
Together they take the pouch and the ring and the dagger down towards the riverbank. She smiles at Fidele, and he smiles back at her.
"Swim out into the river," he says. "I'll swim by your side."
He takes off his doublet and hose, then squelches through the mud of the bank ahead of her and dives ungracefully into the water. She laughs at him, with him, and they laugh again when she performs the manoeuvre with equal awkwardness.
The water is sweetly cold on their skins after the heat of the noonday. Both of them take a mouthful of it as they swim to the center of the river.
"Here?" says Fidele. He has in one hand the dagger and in the other the pouch.
"Yes, here."
He lets the objects loose, and they vanish into the darkness of the water. Perhaps one day the sluggish current will carry them to the sea.
Imogen waits a little longer before she sends the diamond ring to the same destination. It was her loving-gift to Posthumus, but he used it as the wager in a drunken bet he made with a schemer. She, who loved him, was the basis of a bet. Yet she is reluctant to let it go, for it reminds her of how much and how purely and passionately she did love him, once. Before she became something for him to bet on. Before he destroyed her body and aged her with the children. Before he began to come to her bed only because it was expected of him by the court, so that every time he made love with her it was as if he were hurling abuse in her face.
She has hated him for many years. Her revenge has been overdue.
"Hiding the ring is the only way to lose your misery," says Fidele, floating easily in the water, moving his arms and legs just enough to counter the current.
"Yes," she says. "You"re right.'
She is crying, but she drops the ring from her hand.
And then suddenly there is no more crying. She feels as if her body has become lighter, so that the water hardly needs to support her. She flips over on her back, and Fidele does the same. Now the warmth of the summer sun is like a hand stroking her – and she opens her eyes to find that it is indeed a hand.
Fidele's hand.
"You asked me to bathe you," he says.
"We shall bathe each other," she replies. "Then afterwards, perhaps, we can make love before I must re-don my gown and make the pell-mell ride. The thieves would have raped me, you know. Even though I'm a king's daughter, the wise-wives will look for evidence."
"I cannot give you that," says Fidele, washing each finger one by one, and then kissing them. For a reason she does not understand, she is attending to each of his fingers as well, as if there might be blood on his hands too. But it wasn't he who lured Posthumus away from the court for a ride through the country together, and it wasn't he who steered them towards a glade in the forest where they once made love on pine needles, and it wasn't he who chose that spot as the place where, as her husband despised her nostalgia, she plunged the wicked dagger into his throat.
Later, after both she and Fidele are clean, they do indeed make love on the riverbank, and then she puts back on her bloodied gown and, with Posthumus's horse following behind her, rides home.
The afternoon sun is cooler.
~
"I killed him," said Imogen wearily. "Fidele helped me."
The wolf shifted against her.
"Fidele helped you in so many things," it said.
"Did I kill my father as well?"
"No. Your father is still alive, just. But you took all his will to live from him. It might have been kinder if you had killed him."
"How do you know this?" Despite the heat of the fire, she was trembling with cold.
"Because I am your father."
"Father Wolf?"
"Cymbeline."
"You've known all along. Everything about me. But you've never told me that you knew. Always you've pretended I was just some bit of household goods – as if I were a ham hanging in the kitchen or a jester dancing in the Great Hall."
"I'm a king. It is the duty of kings to create heirs, not to nurture their daughters."
The wolf abruptly moved itself away from her. It looked at her as if it wanted to kiss her. She turned her head and gazed into its eyes. There was love visible there.
"No," she said, "you're not my father."
"How can you tell?" said the wolf.
"Your eyes. You love me."
"I'm an old and ailing wolf."
"You love me."
"Perhaps."
"Don't lie."
Imogen closed her eyes in weariness, then opened them again.
There was no wolf in the cave, only the shadows that the fire made on the furthest wall.
Yet she still felt that the wolf had loved her in a truer way than anyone else.
It had loved her. Unlike the other Cymbeline, it had not regarded her as its possession.
She wound her body around a fire that for days had been nothing but ash, shut her eyes, and begged the cold of the night to take her forever from the things she remembered.
MeTopia
"So you see," she told me as we sat together in the birthday party at the pub, she and me at the far end of the table because we were so much older than the others, "I had this husband and things started to go really wrong, you know the way they do, and we had a couple of kids and I thought that was going to sort things out for us, so that Dave and I would get the act together, but in fact what happened was that Dave went out to the pub all night even more than before because he couldn't stand the kid screaming, as kids do, and he really didn't want to change her nappies, and so I got stuck with all of that shit, no pun intended, and when I was there at home, all on my own (by this time the kid was out of nappies but had a habit of throwing up in inconvenient places just as I was falling asleep), I was thinking Why the hell is Dave out at the pub all the time while I'm having to deal with this?, and I wasn't put on this Earth as a mere shit shoveler, so I started hinting to him that kids have two parents, not just the one, and for a long time he didn't react, just ate his bacon sandwich or whatever it was I'd put on the table in front of him that night before he went out to the pub – he was a solicitor, by the way, and when he was younger he was quite good-looking – but after a while he began shouting back at me, which in a way was OK because I'd been shouting at him about how I never saw him too much any longer, except the kid didn't like it, and when she was about nine months he began hitting me around quite a lot, so that one time I was in hospital for three weeks, which of course meant the kid was taken away, and I can't blame the people who did that, and though I see her now only maybe every fortnight or so at least that fuckwit never sees her at all, and I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad, what a bastard he was and probably still is somewhere with some other woman, except I hope he doesn't beat her up the way he did me, but I bet he does."
I looked at her, and my heart cried for her because she had been beaten by some fucker, and I was a bit turned on because it seemed she was coming on to me (an unusual experience for me) with this story, and anyway I wasn't going to take advantage – because only an arsehole does stuff like that, and what sh
e needed to cuddle down with for the night was a kitten, not a bloke) – and so I got her another pint, which was probably a bad move, because her lachrymosity increased to the point where I had to put my arm around her shoulder, and all I wanted to do was be her friend and she needed the shoulder of a friend to weep on – you know the kind of thing, yup, been there, done that, aw, c'mon there, darling, must have been bloody awful, I'd fucking kill him if he were here (which I, Mr. Pacifist himself, would have, right then), but no, when I thought a little longer and as her tears seeped into my clothing, I realized various things:
Item A
She was going home alone, not to her husband but to her bedsit. If I went with her I would be exploiting her just as much as the husband who had hit her. I might kiss her before she got into her cab, but it would be her cab, and it'd take her to her home.
Item B
I wanted her. I loved the way her eyes moved. We all have impulses.
Item C
The reason she had been hurt so much in her life was that her story had been incorrectly written.
Whoever is up there in the sky had gotten the plot wrong, so I started changing it quite substantially, without her realizing it at all, so that Dave had never beaten the hell out of her, although he had from time to time sworn at her in moments of irritation (as happens), and the love had slipped out of their lives (despite the kid) and the usual stuff, and at last they said goodbye on friendly grounds, both of them finding someone else whom they could love as much as they loved the kid, and when the new story was conjured, so that it was the latest edition of reality, her shoulders lifted in a way they had never before done during the evening, and maybe it was something wrong I had done, changing the fabric of her past the way I did, but I find it hard to convince myself it was, because just before she climbed into her cab we did indeed kiss, but only each other's cheeks and eyelids, and as the car drew away she was smiling not because of the kiss and not because of the pub or the party or my company or whatever, but because now her story had been rewritten so that it was a happier one, one she could live with.
I watched her go and then raised my wings because there was moonlight in which I wanted to play.
We serve.
Copyright Stuff
Cover image: Part of the Eta Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), seen by the Hubble Space Telescope
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)
Wooden Horse was first published in The Third Alternative; copyright © John Grant 2002, 2004
The Glad who Sang a Mermaid in from the Probability Sea was first published in Interzone; copyright © John Grant 1995, 2004
A Lean and Hungry Look is original to this anthology; copyright © John Grant 2004
I Could Have a General Be / In the Bright King's Arr-umm-ee was first published in The Rising Sun. Revised and republished in Stories of Fear II, edited by Richard Lee; copyright © John Grant 2000, 2002, 2004
Snare was first published in Strange Pleasures, edited by Sean Wallace; copyright © John Grant 2001, 2004
The Dead Monkey Puzzle was first published in Underworlds; copyright © John Grant 2003, 2004
All the Best Curses Last for a Lifetime was first published under the title Beast in Odyssey; copyright © John Grant 1997, 2004
A Case of Four Fingers was first published in The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy, edited by Mike Ashley; copyright © John Grant 2001, 2004
Sheep is original to this anthology; copyright © John Grant 2004
The Machine It Was That Cried was first published in Digital Dreams, edited by David V. Barrett; copyright © John Grant 1990, 2004
Coma was first published in Strange Pleasures #3, edited by Dave Hutchinson; copyright © John Grant 2003, 2004
Mouse was first published in Outside the Box, edited by Lou Anders; copyright © John Grant 2001, 2004
How I Slept with the Queen of China was first published, in somewhat different form, as part of the novel The World; copyright © John Grant 1992, 2004
Imogen was first published in Shakespearean Whodunnits, edited by Mike Ashley; copyright © John Grant 1997, 2004
MeTopia was first published in Dreaming of Angels, edited by Gord Rollo and Monica J. O'Rourke; copyright © John Grant 2002, 2004
The extract from Janis Ian's song "Take No Prisoners" is copyright © 1995 Rude Girl Publishing, and is used by kind permission of Janis Ian. The song features on the CD Revenge (which has a studio version) and also on the CD Unreleased 2: Take No Prisoners (which has a considerably extended live version). Visit Janis's website at www.janisian.com.
About the author
John Grant is author of some sixty books, of which about twenty-five are fiction, including novels like The World, The Hundredfold Problem, The Far-Enough Window, The Dragons of Manhattan and Leaving Fortusa. His "book-length fiction" Dragonhenge, illustrated by Bob Eggleton, was shortlisted for a Hugo Award in 2003; its successor was The Stardragons. His first story collection, Take No Prisoners, appeared in 2004. His anthology New Writings in the Fantastic was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award. His novella The City in These Pages appeared in early 2009 from PS Publishing; PS will publish another of his novellas, The Lonely Hunter, in 2011. In nonfiction, he has coedited with John Clute The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and written in their entirety all three editions of The Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters. Among his latest nonfictions have been Discarded Science, Corrupted Science and Bogus Science. He is currently working on Denying Science (to be published by Prometheus in 2011). As John Grant he has received two Hugo Awards, the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and various other international literary awards. Under his given name, Paul Barnett, he has written a few books (like the space operas Strider's Galaxy and Strider's Universe) and for a number of years ran the world-famous fantasy-artbook imprint Paper Tiger, for this work earning a Chesley Award and a nomination for the World Fantasy Award. His website is at www.johngrantpaulbarnett.com.
Bonus material
Bonus Story #1
The Hard Stuff
We saw things in Falluja that no one should be expected to see and want to carry on living. People fused together by the flames, pregnant women with their guts splayed out and the unborn child among them, infants with their limbs blown away. All the time our superior officers kept telling us it was the insurgents who'd done this with their car bombs and their mortars, and all the time we knew they didn't even believe this themselves. We'd rained high explosives and incendiaries and hell upon these people. Some of them had probably been ready to kill us; the vast majority of them were just ordinary men and women and kids who'd been caught underneath the technology we'd let fall on them; none of them deserved what we'd done to them. What made it worse was that we all of us knew by then there was no real reason for us to have done any of it. We'd been lied into this place by people who used human beings' lives as rungs on a ladder of personal greed.
We moved forward through the smoke and the stink of burning masonry and people's flesh. Some of us threw up, some of us did terrible things to the occasional survivors we encountered, all of us had no expectations that we'd ever be the same again.
I don't remember anything about the moment when the ghosts of the dead took their revenge on me. Their tool might have been a home-made incendiary that somehow hadn't detonated earlier, during the bombardment. It could have been one of our own bombs. All I knew was that one moment I was probing through the smoking hinterlands of Hell, my rifle at the ready, and the next I was ... somewhere else, a place where there was nothing to be seen or sensed except the agony that devoured me. Every cell of my body had been replaced by a flame. The whitest heat of the fire was in my arms; from there it spread to fill everything.
Then there was a time when the world was a polychromatic fan of constantly shifting images, none of which made any sense at all even though they seemed like memories I might once have had. But this time of release couldn't last for long – never lo
ng enough – before the fire returned to claim me. There was a thunder in my ears that was either the roaring flames or my own bellows of pain and terror. Occasionally I had fleeting glimpses of faces that were trying to look kindly but succeeded instead only in looking routinely resigned.
Someone told me I was lucky still to be alive, to have all my senses and my "good looks" intact, but it was only later that I was able to stitch those words together, like someone painstakingly repairing a ripped piece of lace. At the time they were just stray torn threads that didn't seem to have any relation to each other, dancing along in a gale of raw heat. Then I was told, repeatedly, that I was going home. That didn't make sense to me either. Didn't these people realize I had no home? That all I had was that I was? I had no past, unless my past was an infinity of the fire that was the present. I wasn't a human being any longer, had never been. I was just a construct woven from filaments of everlasting pain.
But one more thing I didn't have was any words with which to say any of this. So I just carried on through the tunnel of eternity until at last I noticed things were different.
~
"Your trouble, Quinn," said Tania, "is that you're forever filling your head with all the things you can't do any longer. It makes you think there's nothing you can do."
