Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld (Clarkesworld Anthology)

by Nick Mamatas

  He loved me, I know that. I know that like I know the wind loves the Cascade forests. And his love brought lightning from heaven and seven kinds of hell if I lied about who ate the last Hydrox, and the metal end of the belt for being too noisy after seven o’clock. God is watching you, boy. God loves you, but He’s got his eye on you.

  Family comes first, boy. God took care of His boy, and I’m gonna take care of you the same way.

  Family first.

  “Daddy, Paulie showed me his penis.” And she dissolved into giggles.

  A moment of panic. Elaine and I had talked about this a lot—we communicated pretty good, except when it really counted. Mommy’s in the basement, but Daddy’s in charge upstairs. “Hey, kid, you know that’s not talk we want to hear. His penis is private to him, and your vagina is private to you.”

  “Penis, penis, penis.” Another one-handed cartwheel.

  “Sweetie.”

  “Penis?”

  Ignore, ignore, ignore. “Sweetie, if he does anything like that again, you need to tell me or Mommy right away.”

  “Silly Daddy, all the boys do it.”

  So I went and drew some more.

  “You’re spending too much time in the basement, Jim.”

  I shrugged. “Sorry.” There was a picture nagging me, a bull mammoth striding down Grand Avenue, stomping the busses and cars into the pavement. But the vehicles would all be brass, or maybe copper, shiny in some weird way that I couldn’t quite figure out yet.

  “Is this important? You know I’m really proud of you, but you need to spend more time with us.”

  “Okay.”

  The next day, an hour of Lynette’s divorce and what the first grade mothers were up to and when I tried to talk about the problems of rendering metallics, a blank stare.

  We never talk about my work. My love. My fire.

  That and we haven’t had sex at all in eleven months. Not half a dozen times in two years or more.

  But down at Speed Racer’s, the girls like me. And they care about art.

  “Family, boy,” my grandfather says, stomping his way down Grand Avenue. He’s tall as the Hawthorne Bridge’s draw towers, and he’s got that bulldog face I haven’t seen above ground since 1973. I can see Dad in him, too, the two of them wrapped together in one giant male ancestor.

  I must be dreaming, but I can’t find my fingers for the proverbial pinch.

  Where the hell was my family when I needed them? Where the hell were the holding hands, keeping me out of the street and free from worry, those long-ago years when the monsters in the basement had gotten real in the life of some kid with my name and face?

  “Family, boy,” my grandfather says again, and the sky shakes with his voice. His teeth are the hoods of Cadillacs, and the turbines of Bonneville Dam spin in his eyes.

  When did Granddaddy become a force of nature, I wonder, as the winds blow me into dark, waiting mouths far below the pavement.

  I won the Meadows Prize. The pre-eminent competition for early-career illustrators. Judged out of Omaha, Nebraska of all places. Russell had badgered me to enter it. Elaine had cheered me on. Ariadne just thought it was funny.

  “We’ll be expressing you the prize money,” said a snippy-polite woman on the telephone. “I do hope you can make it out here to Omaha for the ceremonies.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Omaha, center of the nation’s call center industry. What with my career in telemarketing, I’d been to Omaha a hundred times. Why couldn’t they hold the damned awards in Hollywood or something?

  “I’m so proud of you,” Elaine had said.

  “Daddy won an award surprise,” Ariadne had said.

  Smiling, we flew off to our eventual ruin.

  Art jams. Shows. An early gallery date at a place just outside downtown Seattle. Did you have enough? Did you do enough? Russell, finally dropping away from pushing me because my momentum had gotten ahead of my inertia. Who needs fucking telemarketing anyway? Other than my mortgage holder, I mean.

  And the commissions started coming in. People wanted to look at my pictures of the darkness.

  I stopped burning my illustrations.

  I started photographing, drawing, painting Ariadne more and more.

  Elaine started complaining about the trips, the distraction, the ride.

  But I kept getting the sweats and the tingles and that place inside me where light blazed up and cast a shadow on my drawing table until something burned into being. And sometimes that burned thing was good.

  Every once in a while, it was damned good.

  Who the fuck ever knew I could do this?

  Eleven years of marriage and I had to go fall off a cliff over someone else. What the hell was wrong with me? Thirty years in his grave and Granddaddy is shouting even now.

  I’d gone off to San Francisco for a big show on the strength of my Meadows win. My chance to be seen along with some of the great names in the illustration field. People whose work I’d been admiring since I was a kid.

  Some of whom knew my name these days.

  It was glorious. Tuxedos and two-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne and the art press from New York and L.A. and even Tokyo. I mean, SoHo this ain’t, but there’s layers and layers inside every world.

  Who needs telemarketing?

  The fire was hot inside me. The world loved me. And she came walking by.

  I won’t tell you who she is. An artist, like me. The rest of it’s nobody’s business but hers and mine. And we didn’t get up to any business between us, not serious business at any rate. I know better.

  Barely, at least on my end of the affair.

  But I walked out with a flute of bubbly in my hand through a cascade of photo flashes into the Mission District night and wondered how the hell my heart had felt free to roam when my head knew far, far better.

  It was a long drive back to Oregon. Lots of head time.

  The fire burned in my head, in her eyes, in my hands trembling on the wheel as the miles clicked by and my thoughts spun.

  I called Russell from the car somewhere up around Weed. The hour was very, very small. “I’m hosed, buddy.”

  He yawned. “Take a number, man. Aren’t you up a little late?”

  I’d thrown the champagne flute out the window a hundred miles ago, but my tongue was still loose. “I’m never going to sleep again. I don’t want to dream.”

  “What happened? You get arrested or something?”

  “I got success disease, Russell.”

  “Some people have all the luck. Go to sleep, man.”

  “Not at eighty miles an hour.”

  “Pull over. Call me tomorrow.”

  I got a room up at the state line, crashed out, didn’t sleep ten minutes the whole night. Four hours later, avoiding Elaine, I called Russell again.

  “I’m going to block your number, man, keep this shit up.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” How many nights had we drunk away his gender issues? “Look, what’s wrong with me?”

  “For one, you make too fucking many phone calls.”

  “Seriously. Russell, dude, I got the fire. The fire’s got me.”

  Russell knew from the fire. We’d talked about it enough. “Yeah . . . ?”

  “I either got to dive all the way in or quit this stuff.”

  “Uh . . . yeah?”

  “There’s a girl, Russell.”

  “You didn’t . . . did you?”

  I hated the way his voice rose. Almost hopeful. “No,” I snapped. “But I could have. And that scares me shitless.”

  “Um, man, look, this ain’t exactly a surprise.”

  “It is to me.”

  “Not to some of us. You’re going somewhere, man. This is your way of finally noticing it.”

  I hung up on him and got back out on the highway. Five more hours of blacktop should do me good.

  Item: I live in a house where I can sit in none of the chairs. They are dainty and lovely and not for me.

  Item: I live in a beautif
ul house.

  Item: Elaine won’t look at my work, or talk about it.

  Item: I am well-loved.

  Item: I am a fly trapped in tree sap, no longer happy to live in amber.

  Item: I am well-loved.

  Item: My life is on fire.

  Item: I am well-loved.

  Item: I can see those flames in her eyes.

  Item: I have a child. But I married my mother.

  Item: Family, boy. Family first, or you’ll feel the metal end of my belt.

  “So, how was your trip, Daddy?” Ariadne has her serious, I’m-talking-like-a-grown-up voice.

  “Busy, sweetie.”

  The phone rings. Upstairs calling. There is strain in Elaine’s voice, irritation barely concealed at my wandering ways. The art jams, the conferences, the shows. San Francisco. “Could you come up here, please, and talk to me.”

  The Mommy demons with their glittering teeth follow me everywhere now. I carry my basement in my head all the time, and my scalp prickles.

  Speed Racer’s was pretty quiet on Tuesday morning. I’d skipped out on a loyalty program meeting and two quarterly account reviews.

  Like any of that stuff mattered.

  Waiting for Russell, I suddenly realized I’d been happy being a marketing monkey all these years. Happy until I’d set fire to my life with art.

  “Hey,” he said. My buddy was wearing a pink Hello, Kitty! top with cupped sleeves and one bra strap showing. This over Bermuda shorts and a pair of Docs so clunky he could have gone stevedoring in them. In Omaha that outfit would have gotten him beaten, then arrested. In Portland no one noticed.

  “Hey.” I couldn’t get much more than that out.

  “How’s the art fire?”

  “Burning.” I’d been doodling a chrome-steel breast on my napkin. The nipple had razor spikes barely sticking above the bumps. I pushed it over to him.

  “You need a date, man.”

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “I just got here.”

  “No, no. I mean, I’m leaving Elaine.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a latte-punctuated silence that lasted quite a bit longer than our normal pauses. Finally he filled it. “Art or family, huh?”

  “Art or family. There is middle ground, I guess. Nothing but compromises.” I pushed my face into my hands, as if there were wisdom to be found at the junction between my knuckles and my cheekbones. Talking through my palms, I said, “Anything else will be endless negotiation. I’ve had years of practice stalling what I want and need.”

  “You’ve grown apart.” I could hear the rustle of his shrug. “It happens.”

  My eyes stung. Thank God for concealing fingers. “Ariadne. It’s Ariadne.”

  “You’re not running out on your kid, man. You’re running into the fire. She’ll love you for it.”

  Someday.

  Love yesterday, love tomorrow, love someday. But fire today.

  “Come here, boy.” Granddaddy always smelled of tobacco and sweat, and whatever that old man lotion is they sell down at the drugstore.

  I sat on his lap. It was like climbing a polyester cliff face. Hands bigger than my head closed around my thin wrists.

  “Family,” he hissed hot in my ear, this man who’d been married to the same woman for going on fifty years and never called her by her first name. “Family always comes first.”

  You never knew the fire, Granddaddy. Or if you did, you walked away from it. And sir, with all respect to your seniority in the armies of the dead, I can’t tell you which of those things might be the more sad.

  There’s never any reason to leave your family behind. When Mom and Dad did it to me and left me with him, I came to swear that I’d never do the same to any child of mine.

  Especially that beautiful kid with her hand tucked between my fingers.

  Now Daddy’s in the basement, chewing up the innocent.

  Jay Lake lives and works in Portland, Oregon, within sight of an 11,000-foot volcano. He is the author of over two hundred short stories, four collections, and a chapbook, along with novels from Tor Books, Night Shade Books and Fairwood Press. Jay is also the co-editor with Deborah Layne of the critically-acclaimed Polyphony anthology series from Wheatland Press. His next few projects include The River Knows Its Own (Wheatland Press), Madness of Flowers (Night Shade Books) and Stemwinder (Tor). In 2004, Jay won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He has also been a Hugo nominee for his short fiction and a three-time World Fantasy Award nominee for his editing. Jay can be reached via his Web site at www.jlake.com

  ATTAR OF ROSES

  Sharon Mock

  The shadow of my father’s citadel falls over me and still I tremble. Still I look perpetually over my shoulder as though you follow me, you who are banished from this land forever. In my fever I think that it is you who dries the leaves on the trees, blows away the petals of the rose. But no, it is only autumn, nothing more.

  My father will be heartbroken. And you, you cannot lend me words to explain what I have done.

  They say that when I was born, blossoms spread on the rose bushes outside my mother’s birthing chamber. They say that where I step, blood-red petals spring from the earth. The first, my father tells me, is a legend. The second has been known to happen on occasion, though only by my design.

  I was born deep in the northern mountains, far from the great confederacies, where my father nurtured his magic without interference. His was the power of earth, roots of stone and springs of water. My gifts, on the other hand, were merely decorative—grace and beauty and youth forever born anew in spring. Sorcerers traveled from the tradelands to court me, Rosalaia, Blossom of the North. I would have none of them. My father sent them all away. Far better for me to grant my grace at my father’s side, take my consorts from the young men of the city, make our land a well-defended paradise.

  For centuries I believed that this was the life for which I was intended.

  My father hated the west. Great sorcerers ruled great nations through conquest and slavery, not the treaties and alliances that governed our more civilized lands. He never spoke of the reasons for his enmity, so I assumed the lords had offended him in some way.

  We could not afford to abolish all intercourse with the western nations. When caravans and emissaries arrived at our citadel, I was banished to my chambers, forbidden to set eyes on the barbarians. But I knew the secret passages of my father’s citadel at least as well as he did, and when I tired of my ignorance I slipped out to catch sight of one of these westerners for myself.

  I needed no lantern to navigate the darkness. I had played here often enough as a child, and used the passages when I wished to go down to the city, though my father would not have cared if I had left by the front door. As though by instinct I found myself at the ledge that overlooked the audience chamber.

  The spyhole was camouflaged within the whorls of my father’s throne, so I had a perfect view of the westerner. He had not the courtesy to clean himself before the audience. He wore traveling clothes dull with dirt, and his yellow-white hair clung to his narrow head. He spoke of grain monopolies in a tedious drone, and my father responded with far more courtesy than the man deserved.

  Then, as my father consulted with his minister, the westerner’s gaze came to rest on the throne. It was as though our eyes met, though reason said he could not see me. Still my heart rushed and pounded, my knees gave way, and I had to wait until my strength returned before I could retreat to my chambers again.

  I should have known, even then. The citadel obeys my father’s will. He could have kept me in my rooms, the very stones locking me away. Yet only now do I realize he cared not what I saw, as long as I remained unseen. All he wanted was to keep me hidden from you.

  That winter a solitary emissary came to our citadel bearing a seeing-stone. When my father gazed into it, he saw a path of fresh green grass cutting through the snow, a constellation of southern armies set upon it.

  You knew o
f my existence, the girl who made the roses bloom. Even in the civilized east, the Avenarch had many allies. You asked for my hand in marriage, and made certain my father could not refuse.

  My father came to me with the terms you had set. His eyes were red, his face worn and polished as river stone. He had aged a hundred years since I had greeted him that morning. He lay the scroll in my lap and shook his head. “You don’t have to do this, my daughter,” he told me in a voice stung with grief.

  I read over the scroll, the promises of extravagant dowry, and did not understand.

  “You could flee. Across the ocean, where his agents . . . .”

  “Why should I flee?”

  “Look to the west, beyond the mountains. See the powers that lie in that accursed realm. Then you’ll understand.”

  I did as my father bade. Shut my eyes, let my perception travel westward along root and bough, out of my father’s holdings, through snowbound passes and wild forest. The sweet scent of loam and sap took on a cloying edge, the promise of rot. Rosalaia. The wind whispered my name like petals on silk. Come to me. Let me look at you.

  Fear overcame my arrogance then, and I opened my eyes. The smell of dead roses clung to the back of my throat.

  “It is a travesty,” my father said. “I would not give you to him for all the world.”

  “Then why don’t you send him away like the others?”

  With trembling hands my father passed the seeing-stone to me. I saw, then, and knew what would happen if he refused you. Your eastern agents would kill him, claim our holdings and our powers for their own. Then—and here was a message intended not for my father but for me, and only having heard your whispered voice could I perceive it—then your agents would hunt me down and bring me back to you, to serve not as betrothed but as slave.

  I looked up from the stone, into my father’s face. “I will go to him.” I kept my voice steady, full of solemnity and sorrow. Yet my heart leapt with exultation. Here was what I had been born for, here was the life that awaited me, rich and decadent, flowers twining in the bones of a corpse.