Rem looked down at her and said, "Orphyns. It's All Hallow's Eve, Isis. Welcome home."
They danced. They ran around the warehouse like kids in an amusement park, saying hello to those they knew from the street. Noise numbed their eardrums. Voices came at them from every angle, muffled, as if they were underwater. Lola disappeared for half an hour, then reappeared on the dance floor with a broad grin on her face. She gestured for the others to follow her to the bathrooms, shaking her hips as she led the way. They followed. In the bathroom, with the music and noise thudding on the other side of the door, she held her hand out, palm up, producing six round tablets with smile faces imprinted on the flat sides. Rem said, "I hope you didn't pay too much for those."
"I've been saving," said Lola. "It's on me. Don't worry. It's Christmas."
"It's Halloween," said Isis.
Lola rolled her eyes. "Come on, Isis," she said. "You know what I mean."
Rem plucked his pills from the stash and swallowed them down with water from the sink faucet. Meph and Isis followed. They left the bathrooms together and entered the fray of dancers once more. Leaving the bathroom, Isis had to readjust her eyes again to the dark of the dance floor. The glow sticks lit the warehouse with an eerie greenish-blue light. Someone else, another Orphyn, glowed too. Her whole body surrounded with a soft yellow light. Her hair was white. Her hips were round and she curved in all the right places. She smiled with all of her teeth. Isis thought she looked like an angel. It reminded her too much of her own body. She had been dancing with Rem, but then she wasn't. She had stopped as she looked at this girl lit up by the light of her own body. "What's the matter?" Rem's voice came to her.
"Who is she?" Isis asked.
He looked around until he figured out who had caught Isis's gaze. "Pearl," said Rem, his voice flattening.
"She's beautiful," said Isis, and Rem's hands were on her hips, pulling her back to dance with him. She looked up into his dark eyes. "She's beautiful," she repeated.
"She's pretty," said Rem.
"I wish I looked like that," said Isis.
"Like what?"
"Like a goddess."
"You do," said Rem. He kissed her forehead and her cheeks.
Isis blushed but shook her head. "No, I mean pretty, Rem."
"But you are pretty," said Rem.
"Not like her," said Isis.
"No, not like her," said Rem. "You're a different kind of pretty."
"How?" Isis asked, laughter covering up her fear.
"You know," said Rem. "Pearl's pretty like you'd touch her and she'd disappear. You're different," said Rem. "You're solid."
She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, but she took it as a compliment, laughed and said, "Sure," and lay her head on his chest. The music beat fast, and so did his heart, but they moved slowly. Suddenly, something melted inside Isis's chest, her head, her heart, and she was up again, and so was Rem, and the music entered them, spreading through their bodies like tea from a bag. Their bodies moved without direction; the music, puppeteer strings controlling them. Lola and Meph danced a few feet away in the sea of half-lit faces. "Oh wow," said Isis. Her flesh hummed.
Rem said, "Am I losing you?"
"No, I'm here," she said. "This stuff is powerful. Wow," she said again. "Lola doesn't mess around, does she?"
Rem laughed, his head swaying to the rhythms, his hips rolling. He moved like a fish in water, fluid, darting this way and that.
An hour later, exhilarated but feeling a little crowded, they decided to leave the warehouse. Lola and Meph remained behind to dance the pills off together. As Isis left the dance floor, she saw Lola kiss Meph's bandaged hands as they danced in a dark corner, placing each cloaked fingertip against her lips. In the center of the dance floor, Pearl spun, a white-hot essence.
"Beautiful," Isis said, and then they were outside in the October night chill. The cold air hit Isis hard. The pill heated her insides, but her skin was more sensitive than ever. Goose bumps shivered all over her body. Rem draped his army jacket over her shoulders, slid his arm around her waist. She let him keep it there as they walked, dropping into a lazy rhythm.
Halfway home, though, she felt him tense as they came out from the underground. The man who Rem had warned her about--the Nobody, the straight, he had called him--stood on the corner opposite. He stepped down from the curbside and Rem whispered, "Turn around, we're running the opposite way."
Isis nodded. Slowly they turned, then both took off in a sprint. Isis looked over her shoulder once. Rem ran a few steps behind, looking over his shoulder also. Beyond Rem's shoulder, she saw the Nobody giving chase. Isis turned a corner, then another, and another, making sure Rem was behind her every so often, monuments and buildings and brick and mailboxes blurring beside her, until she was out of breath and heaving and lost, she was sure, and hoping that Rem would say they didn't need to run any longer.
He caught up to her a moment later, breathing hard. Their breath fumed, plumes steaming. They bent at their waists, hands braced against their thighs like runners. For a while, neither of them said anything. Finally Isis looked around and said, "Where the fuck are we?"
Rem looked around too, licking his lips. "Almost back at the docks," he wheezed.
"Did we lose him?" asked Isis.
Rem nodded. He pushed hair out of his eyes.
"All right then," said Isis. But she hesitated. She was going to say, "Start talking, Rem. Who was that guy?" Now she had the right to ask. Her life had been endangered due to some obscure past Rem shared with the man. But she couldn't bring herself to demand such knowledge when she had shared so little of her own.
Rem lifted his chin a little, said, "What? What were you going to say?"
She shook her head.
Suddenly a phone rang. Rem looked around to find its source. The ringing split the misty night air, echoing through the alleys. He spotted the phone booth across the street and laughed at his being startled by it. "Let's go," he said, waving to Isis, and she shook her head again, no, nodding toward the phone.
"Answer it," she told him.
He squinted, puzzled by her insistence. When he realized she was serious, he jogged lazily across the street. The phone rang in its booth, but the phone itself hung limp on its cord, dangling. He picked it up, placing the receiver next to his ear.
"Hello? Rem?" a voice came through crisply. It was Isis. Rem looked across the street. She stood on the street corner, leaning against a brick wall, her hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his army jacket. Her mouth closed. "It's me," she said. "It's Isis. This is what I can do, Rem. This is what I can do."
He nodded, still holding her stare. Then he said, "He was this guy I once tried loving. But he's not comfortable with my memory, so he wants me gone."
"I know that already," said Isis.
"I know you already know," said Rem. "I wanted to tell you myself though."
"How did you know I knew?" Isis smiled, their wordplay on the phone now a game, an honoring of her revelation, and of his.
"Because I remembered when you figured it out," he said. "Just a few blocks ago, you figured it out. I just remembered you did that."
"What do you mean?"
Rem said, "That's what I can do. Remember. Other people's memories, not just my own."
"Then you'll always know the past. Even mine."
"Yes," he said. His voice grew quiet. "But only after the fact. When it's too late to do anything."
"That's like knowing nothing about nothing," said Isis.
He nodded. The receiver was starting to warm against his ear.
"That's okay," said Isis. "I can talk through doors, phone booths, even to air and rocks and water, and what good does it do me?" She laughed, but her mouth didn't open enough for the laughter to really live. "What good does changing the color of her hair, or her clothes, or the walls of my room do Lola? What good are Meph's hands? Nothing," said Isis. "We're a whole lot of nothing, and it's okay, right, Rem?"
Rem shook his head. "Let's go back to the church," he said, and hung up.
---
"First things first," Rem said as they entered the front room of St. Peter and Paul's. He lit a few half-melted candles on the altar. Then he sat down with his legs stretched in front of him. He gestured for Isis to do the same. "Right across from me," he told her. Isis sat, stretching her legs out like Rem. They placed the soles of their feet against one another and lay on their backs looking up at the darkness that filled the vaulted ceiling. Every so often, a drop of water fell from above, landing near Isis's ear.
"What are we doing, Rem?"
"Be quiet," he said. "And remember."
As he spoke, another drop fell from the cavernous dark above. Isis followed the path of its decent. White light trailed behind it, like the tail of a comet. A falling star, thought Isis, and as the drop landed, an explosion rang in her ears. A bright light flashed in the darkness, blinding her. When her vision returned, she saw her mother holding a baby. Then she was the baby, looking up into her mother's face, the high cheekbones, the earrings dangling, catching the light. She reached out with a chubby fist to hold the light, but it melted in her hands. Gathering itself into a tendril, the light slithered up the side of her arm and neck, then snapped backward like a whip and entered her right eye. There was no pain. When her vision cleared again, Isis stood in a circle of robed figures, hoods shrouding their faces in shadow. All around her, a city loomed. But this was not the city she knew. Not the one in which she now lived, nor the one she'd left behind. The buildings of this city rose out of the earth like slabs of stone, as if they had always been a part of the landscape. Like mountains, they looked as if they'd been grown. Soft yellow-white lights lit the streets, like luminous pearls, the source of their power a secret of the air itself. The figures surrounding Isis whispered in unfamiliar tongues. They sound sad, thought Isis. But she revised her initial reaction. No. Not sad. Serious. They were doing something important here. Religious maybe. Mystical even. She tried on as many words as she could think of, but none completely fit the feeling, and all seemed only partially right. She sighed in frustration and the robed figure sitting next to her put his hand on her shoulder. Isis flinched. She turned and the figure turned to face her. He pulled back his hood. It was Rem. He spoke in the same tongue as the others. She watched his lips move, his tongue flicking behind his teeth. His nostrils flared. Then he placed his hands on her ears and his words filled her.
"This is the circle where you were born, a long, long time ago," Rem began. "It is the circle of your ancestors. This is the circle your mother was born to, and you to your mother, and so will be your sons and daughters. You are not a lost thing. You no longer have to live in the dark. Look. Around us, you see the city where our people began. Behind you is the Cathedral of Stones, where we worshipped our gods and elders. Before you is the Sea of Ageon, where we fished and crossed to the Northerlands. It was in the Northerlands that our people separated. There we found the way into the world we now live in, and the group of our people who crossed over could not find the way back. We are still looking. Even now our people look for the way home. We call ourselves Orphyns, and so we are without fathers and mothers, but we were not abandoned. We have lost our family, but only because we could not find our way back. Here are the memories, the circle of life that waits daily for our return, the fire that burns in the center, warming their hopes that we will find our way back, and so we shall. As we find each other, we find our way home."
He leaned in and kissed her, filling her mouth the way his words filled her body. She kissed back, and as she pulled away said, "My name is Iris."
"My name is Michael," he said, "though here they call me the Rememberer."
She wrapped her arms around him and he leaned into her.
"Thank you," she said.
Then darkness crept in at the city borders. Within moments it devoured the streets, the people, the Cathedral of Stones, the circle. Rem's face gold leafed by firelight was the last thing Isis saw before darkness consumed her.
---
She woke to the sound of someone shouting, and her vision returned. She sat up from the cold floor, but Rem was already gone. "Rem?" she shouted. Outside, an explosion rang through the streets. Gunfire. Isis could distinguish that from similar sounds without any effort. Running drugs with Howard had prepped her so a gunshot no longer disturbed her. Before she would have flinched in fear. Now she simply got up, looking for a hiding place, an escape route.
A moment later, her senses gathered, she ran to the front of the church and peered out a hole in one of the stained glass windows. In the street outside, Rem kneeled, holding his side. A man fled around the corner with a gun gripped in his hand. The Nobody. The man Rem had tried to love. The Normal. He had found them after all. Isis wondered what could have transpired between them that could possibly make someone who loved you want to destroy you. It didn't make sense. But then she thought of her mother, her father. What could make a person who loved you leave? She had done it. She had left her father, a drunk--harmless and in need of care--and she had not looked back.
"Help," she screamed. "Meph! Lola! Someone! Rem's been
hurt."
Before she reached him, Rem had slumped down on the street, curled into the fetal position. At his body, she knelt down and touched his shoulder. His face was turned away.
"Rem," she said, her voice a ragged whisper. "Rem, say something. Are you all right?"
He didn't respond, so she grabbed him by his army jacket and pulled him over so that he lay on his back. A groan escaped his grit-covered lips. His eyes remained closed. She saw the hole in his jacket then, stained black with blood oozing from where the bullet had entered. She pulled the jacket open, and tears sprang to her eyes. It was bad. He needed more help than she could give him.
She reached out, searching the wind and telephone wires and satellite signals in outer space and the thrum of electricity coursing beneath the surface of the city, until she found a connection with a woman answering calls for 911. "Someone's been shot," she told the woman, and gave the address of St. Peter and Paul's. "Hurry," she said. "He needs medical attention." The woman asked her to stay on the line, but Isis said, "I have to go. I'm sorry. I have to go."
She slipped her voice out of the woman's ear and returned it to her tongue. For a moment, she considered doing exactly what she had told the woman. Going. Leaving the scene. There would be questions she couldn't answer. They would return her to her father, put her in juvenile detention. They could find Meph and Lola and take them too. The whole family she had built. The whole family, she thought, would be separated. She couldn't bear it. Better to run away than be run away from.
But she swallowed that impulse, rejecting it. Rem needed her. Her mother had run away from her and her father. She had run away from her father and Howard and God as well. She felt bad about running away from her father, not bad at all about leaving Howard, and God? She felt on equal ground with Him. He'd done the same as she had. Run off and left everyone to their own devices. God was a runaway, too, she thought. Just like anyone. Just like everyone, thought Isis.
But she would not abandon Rem, she decided. Not like this. Not after she had found a place for herself, a space where she could recognize the people around her, and herself among them. She waited for what seemed like hours, but no help came. She imagined this was because the neighborhood she'd told them to come to was a lost section of the city where only the poor, the wretched, and the homeless lived. Things left behind. No need to hurry.
So she would do what she could to help keep Rem in this world, such as it was. Fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, she pulled back both sides and placed her ear against his chest. His heartbeat came back weakly. She slipped her voice into his head, calling. "Rem," she called. "Rem, are you there?" But the only thing that came back was the slow hum of his neural pathways. A flat line of thought.
Since Rem's voice could not be found, she spoke inside his bo
dy. She spoke to his cells, to the sinews of his muscles, to the artery the bullet had grazed. "You have to get better," she told the artery.
"I'm working on it," the artery said.
"Remember how you fit together," she told his body. "Remember."
And the body worked slowly but surely at trying to keep Rem inside. Isis kept her voice steady, filling him with her words as a guide. When he woke again, she'd be waiting. The only people she'd run from now would be those who would keep her from him. She needed him. The Orphyns needed him. To remember for them. There would be Orphyns until the world ended, who needed those stories. Until we find home again, she thought. Until it was safe to forget again, she'd stay.
The sound of an ambulance approaching grew loud in her ears.
Christopher Barzak has returned to his home state of Ohio, where he teaches writing at Youngstown State University, after two years as an English teacher in Japan. His stories have appeared in the anthologies The Coyote Road, Salon Fantastique, Interfictions, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, among others. He is also the author of One for Sorrow, his Crawford Award winning debut novel, and The Love We Share Without Knowing.
Touch
M. Kate Havas
"I dare you to kiss that tree." Chelsea giggled, her cheeks tinted red from alcohol and firelight as she crouched down among the discarded aluminum. A nearly dead cigarette burned between her fingers. "Like, with tongue."
Shrieks of "That's too easy!" and "Eww, gross!" came from the other five players, all reclined in various states of dress around the fire pit. Shadows flickered over skin, illuminating a mixed company of young faces.
"Come on, Chels, she'll catch something!" This set off a new chorus of laughing protests over Chelsea's lack of imagination and disregard for hygiene.
"Just have her get naked." There was a thud as Trinny McAlister, the recipient of the offending dare, smacked at a nearby boy with a dirty baseball cap emblazoned with their high school mascot. She got to her feet with all the grace of a birthing elephant, too buzzed on cheap brew to care.
So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction Page 22
