Fantasy

by Rich Horton

  In the afternoon, we heard Ash again. This time our Father’s face grew dark, and he leant to his falcon and whispered something fierce that roused her. Then he cast her off.

  We climbed farther, then descended into a shallow valley, which was comforting for the shadows it held. I walked behind Anna and Olin and sometimes lifted her hood just enough to tickle her lips with a blade of grass, reminding her to smile. I felt the valley contained a magic that had cut us off from all unpleasantness, for all afternoon it was quiet. But then we heard something I had hoped we’d left behind: Ash’s screaming and pleading. The cries came on closer and faster than ever. Olin cried out and took off running with Anna, crashing deep into the jungle without looking back. But I clung to our Father’s hand, and he never trembled but stared at the broken sky through the trees as the sound grew louder and louder. Then down through the leaves came his falcon, with the sound of Ash’s torment circling round her, and I understood nothing—for how could a bird scream like a boy? She circled our Father’s head and dropped a ragged, bloody scrap from her talons to his hands. Then she settled on his wrist.

  He held out his right hand so I could see the quarry. It was fleshy and clear, like yellowed glass with milky green shapes inside. It was veined and buzzing with botflies. And it screamed and screamed with my brother’s voice until our Father set it on a granite slab and crushed it under his heel.

  We looked for Anna and Olin through the rest of the day and long after dark, not daring to call for them. Finally, our Father pulled me into a cave among the stones, very much like that in which we had left mother. He devised a perch for his bird inside the mouth of the cave, though I knew it pained him that she had no room to spread her wings, for several times I woke to hear him apologizing so deeply that he wept.

  I woke to see distant light, jagged and raw, and heard the sound of voices, these not screaming but calling out with urgency, very brisk and efficient. Father crouched in the mouth of the cave, whispering to his falcon where she perched on his glove. Then he cast her off, and she was gone, with only the faintest sound of a bell. I wondered that he had not removed her bell, but I think the screams of Ash must have deafened him to many sounds. Then, still wearing his glove, father took my hand and tugged me quietly to the threshold, and as we looked over the broken stones we saw greenish fog creeping through the valley below. All sort of animals had struggled from their burrows to die there in the morning mist: marmots and rabbits and lizards, some still thrashing. A wind had begun to thin the shallow cloud, but it also pushed traces of the acrid mist uphill, and we hurried to climb faster than it could seep. His falcon charted our path from above, but although I sometimes saw her shadow or caught a silvery tinkling of her bell, she never came down to us again. And I wondered what my Father could have told her to keep her away.

  As we topped the crest and came down the other side of the ridge, we saw a farther valley where traces of the mist still lingered. And this time, among the small furry bodies, were two larger ones we knew on sight, flushed from their desperate burrow. It needed no closer inspection to know that Olin lay there, and many yards away lay Anna, just out of reach of our Father’s sheltering hand. I thought of how it must have been for Anna, wandering blindly without a guide, never thinking to lift the hood without Father’s ­permission. That was the first moment I saw the hood as a hateful thing and knew it was only by chance that my childhood had not ended the same way; and I wondered if without it she might have escaped.

  We kept to the ridge until we heard voices coming up from the valley to one side where a stream ran. Soon after that, I saw others moving far off among the bamboo staves, and the hue and flow of their garments reminded me of the three travelers, but there were many more of them.

  To avoid being seen we went down from the ridge and sought a more choked passage, where sometimes we went on all fours and sometimes had to wriggle like snakes. From time to time our Father had to pull me over shelves of rock I could not climb myself; he had taken to using his gloved hand to help me, so I could not feel his fingers through it but only the thick, tough leather. It broke my heart, for it seemed he could not bear to touch me without the glove; as if he were already preparing to be apart. I felt almost relieved we were alone now, because my mother would have had no heart for this, and my sister not enough strength. Only I did miss Olin, though.

  In the afternoon, we stepped onto a spur of rock like a stone finger pointing straight out from the mountainside; and I saw more of the world in that one instant than I had seen in my whole life. The land fell away below us, sheer above a rocky slope that thickened into jungle down below. The jungle gave way to a wide plain, burned and bare and grey with the look of recent devastation. Beyond the plain, in a smoky haze, were unnatural shapes that could only be buildings, although the thing they most reminded me of was mountains. The stony finger pointed right at this place. When I asked my father if that was the city, he took his eyes away from it and said, —Yes, Jane.

  And then he said, —I never showed you this. And I hadn’t meant to show any of you, although your mother knew, for we fled from there together. She carried Ash in her belly, while I brought nothing with me but my falcon.

  I looked closer at the city, and in its jumbled center I saw something that puzzled me for seeming so familiar. It was a tall spire, the tallest of them. And at the very tip of that spire was a curved shape that looked like a crook or a question mark, though it ended in a barbed tip; and across it was a slash that seemed to cut through all the haze of distance so that I turned and stared at the emblem on our Father’s glove and saw they were the same.

  —I have done all I can to keep you safe, our Father said. Almost all.

  —Come to me, Jane. Do you understand what we must do? Come to me.

  He stood at the edge of the rock and held out his gloved hand as he had all these days. His face was no longer hard, no longer the face of our Father. I could not see him in it anywhere. Yet I stepped up beside him, for I heard voices coming up among the rocks. I heard footsteps and scrabbling and harsh, panting breaths.

  I hardly sensed his fingers through the thick leather; his hand felt insubstantial inside the heavy glove. Looking out at the city, I thought the air above it was full of dark vibrant motes, and I remembered what he’d said about a sky full of kites. I was not sure if they were present and real or a vision vouchsafed of the future. I only knew they depended on my eyes to see them, for my father’s eyes were lost and empty now, no matter what they had been the day before. It was as if he had pulled a hood over his own head and now expected me to guide him.

  —Ah, Jane, he said.

  And then we took a step together. But his was one step forward, and mine was one step back. I held fast to the glove when his hand went out of it. Then I knelt on the tip of the stone finger and watched him fall until green swallowed him.

  Voices gathered in the air behind me and grew still. I heard footsteps settle at the edge of the rock. They came no closer.

  A shadow brushed over me, and I heard my falcon’s bell. I slipped my hand into the glove and she settled on my wrist in a flurry.

  I leant to put my cheek against her feathers, for she deserved my respect more than any of them. More even than he had.

  When I had made them wait long enough, I left off whispering. I slowly turned to put the city at my back. In the slant evening light, I made sure they saw my face, and I held up the glove so they could all see the emblem upon it.

  At the sight of that, they stared. Then they knelt and bowed their heads, and some lay face-down flat upon the rock.

  —I am Jane, was all I said, and all I had to say.

  IS THERE LIFE AFTER REHAB? by Pat Cadigan

  “Oral sex and only oral sex,” said a woman’s voice somewhere on my right. “Forget beef consommé, forget gravy, forget any of that shit. It’s got to be oral sex or nothing.”

  Now that’s one hell of a conversation to wake up in the middle of, I thought, trying to open my eyes. I w
as slumped on a sofa in some dimly lit place that smelled like a bar. Had to be one of those cocktail lounges that were springing up around the city of late. Trends, eh? You never know what’s going to be chic next. Or even chicy/Mickey, as we used to say back when the Berlin Wall was coming down. Pronounced sheeky-meeky, it meant something was both très chic and Mickey Mouse all at once. Can’t tell you who came up with that one, but I can tell you that I find myself using it now more than ever, even though no one knows what the hell I’m talking about.

  “But wasn’t that rather, uh, awkward?” asked a different woman, on my left. I struggled to raise my drooping head. With my eyelids fluttering, I could only see what looked like a malfunctioning filmstrip of my own lap and part of two others on either side, both of which were far better dressed than mine.

  “That’s the understatement of the decade,” said the woman on my right. I must have passed out during a less interesting conversation, I decided, and my rudeness had driven away whomever had been sitting next to me. Then these two had taken their places. I just hoped they didn’t think me rude for waking up uninvited. “But that wasn’t the worst part,” the woman on my right went on. “You know what the worst part was? Nobody appreciated it.”

  Left: “You’re kidding.”

  Right: “I don’t kid about things like oral sex. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’, to borrow a saying from you-know-who.”

  Both sides laughed together. Obviously, they knew who. I didn’t.

  Right: “Nobody appreciated it, not one little bit. Not my boyfriend, not my other boyfriend, not my other other boyfriend—hell, not even my husband.”

  Left: “Okay, now I’m shocked.”

  Right: “Not any more than I was. A husband who doesn’t appreciate regular blow jobs? How fucked up is that?”

  Left: “Fucked up doesn’t even begin to cover it. If it had been me, I’d have been looking around for the other three horsemen.”

  Right: “Damned fucking-A right you would have. And I bet they’d have appreciated getting some action.” I felt a hard nudge in my ribs. “How about you? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I slurred, or I think I slurred, as I tried to focus on her. “I’ve never tried to blow a harbinger of the apocalypse.”

  Both women laughed heartily, and one of them gave me an even heartier slap on the back. “Hey, Grace,” called the one on the right. “Your friend came to. You maybe want to get her some coffee?”

  Someone grabbed my wrists and hauled me to my feet. “Glad to see you’re back among the living. If you’ll pardon the expression.” Lots more hearty laughter as the same someone took my chin ­between finger and thumb and lifted my head. I found myself staring into the flawless, near-ebony features of my new best friend, Grace Something-Or-Other. Sweeney? Swanson? Swanwick?

  “Do you remember where you are, Lily?” she asked me.

  “You’re assuming I knew to begin with,” I said by way of stalling. Things were coming back to me in bits and pieces. Grace Stone. Her name was Grace Stone, and she had brought me here, which made her the best and only friend I had in this vicinity. “I don’t think you ever actually told me where we were going, just that it was a friendly after-hours club that liked to get started early.”

  Grace smiled, looking pleased with me. “So you do remember coming here?”

  “Not exactly. I remember that we came here, but I can’t even imagine how I was still capable of walking after all those Bloody Marys. You didn’t carry me, did you?”

  Considering that she was almost a head taller than I was and, though not bulky, definitely more muscled, I didn’t think it was such an absurd question. But it made her throw back her head and roar with laughter. “No, I’m not possessed of that kind of extraordinary strength. At the moment,” she added, barely under her breath. “Do you remember how you got this, uh, inebriated?”

  I tried to think, but strangely, all that came to me was a vague image of someone wearing a white dress shirt and a bow tie putting what seemed to be an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth.

  “Did I get CPR from a bartender?” I asked finally.

  Grace laughed again. “No, but you did get AWOL.”

  I had to replay that one a couple of times, and even then I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “I thought it was ‘go AWOL,’ and only if you were in the military.” My head wavered between aching and exploding. “Please don’t tell me I enlisted.”

  “No, you’re still a civilian. In more ways than one.” She started walking me slowly through the room. “You can get AWOL when AWOL stands for ‘Alcohol Without Liquid.’ I didn’t realize you’d never had the pleasure. Otherwise I’d have ordered you a half-strength shot. One whiff and you were out.”

  “Damn,” I said, wondering why anyone had bothered to think up something like Alcohol Without Liquid. “I guess I can’t claim I didn’t inhale.”

  Grace sat me down at a small table and someone put a cup the size of a soup bowl in front of me. My stomach gathered itself for a powerful lurch, then relaxed as I registered the aroma of coffee.

  “Milk?”

  I nodded, waved away an offer of sugar and picked up the cup with both hands, enjoying the aroma again for a moment before taking a large swig. “That’s better,” I said. “For a moment there, I thought it was, uh—”

  “Beef consommé. Or bouillon.” Grace nodded knowingly. “Which you loathe and despise.”

  “Right. Thanks for remembering.” I sipped some more coffee. It was not only the best-tasting coffee I had ever had, it also seemed to have the best head-clearing properties I had ever encountered. It was like I could feel myself sobering up, which everybody knew was ­medically impossible. But then everybody knew it was medically impossible to cure the common cold, AIDS, and vampirism, too. Well, two out of three wasn’t bad, as the saying went. And it was still two out of three, wasn’t it? Sure it was. Vampirism had been cured, and the cure was permanent. Therefore, Grace telling me that someone had come up with a way to reverse the vampirism cure, that was just something I’d dreamed while I’d been passed out after going—getting— AWOL. Just an anxiety dream, a sign that I couldn’t handle non-wet booze.

  “I suppose I don’t have to tell you they don’t serve that here,” said Grace, now sitting across from me with her own enormous cup.

  I frowned at her. “What?”

  “Beef consommé, or any other kind of broth. They don’t serve it here.”

  “Ah. So this isn’t the place to ask for a bull shot.” I laughed faintly.

  Grace’s expression turned a bit confused. “Considering your reaction earlier this evening, I didn’t think you would.”

  “No way. But surely there’s been the odd patron with a taste for beef bouillon and vodka now and then?”

  “Ew.” She gave an elaborate shudder. “I hope not. This isn’t the kind of place that would attract that sort of element. At least, it’s not supposed to be.”

  I sighed. “Lots of things aren’t supposed to be. Like, you aren’t supposed to sober up after a cup of coffee, even coffee this good in a cup this big. But apparently I have.” I put the cup down and folded my arms on the table. “What’s going on?”

  Grace’s smile was studiedly sunny. “Well, what do you remember?”

  “You keep asking me that like it’s crucial. Is it?” I looked around, suddenly feeling self-conscious. It had to be drunken paranoia, I told myself; all the other people in the place weren’t looking at me. There was no reason why they should. Well, none except that I’d made a fool out of myself by passing out, and now they were all probably wondering if I were going to throw up on the carpet for an encore. But I didn’t feel even a little queasy, which was lucky for all of us, including the carpet. It was a pretty nice carpet, the color of very expensive red wine. Must have been brand new as well, as there didn’t seem to be a stain on it anywhere.

  “I just got a little worried after what happened with the AWOL,” Grace said. “I want to make sure you�
�re all right.” Had her eyes always been such a golden amber, I wondered, or did she have contact lenses? And if so, had she put them in while I’d been unconscious? Or taken them out?

  “I appreciate your concern,” I said, feeling warier than I wanted to admit. “I haven’t passed out like that since I was a college student, and I’ve never had a memory blackout. Should I be bracing myself for an industrial-strength hangover?”

  “That depends on you.”

  “You’re right. I’d better get a pitcher of ice water from the bartender.” I started to get up.

  “I’ll get it.” She made a funny little waving gesture with one hand without looking away from me. “You know, we were talking about vampirism before you passed out.”

  “Were we.” The bartender materialized next to the table. He put down a pitcher of ice water with a thump, produced a thick glass tumbler from nowhere like a magician and was gone again before I could search my pockets for a tip.

  “Yes, I was telling you how much I still miss it. I was under the impression that you felt the same way. More or less.” She tilted her head expectantly.

  I managed to pour myself a glass of water with only minor spillage and drank it as slowly as I could. I hadn’t been lying when I’d said that I hadn’t been that drunk since college. I really hadn’t, and I’d really never had a blackout. But I was having trouble remembering everything that had happened between the time I had walked out of the support group meeting to when I had woken up during the oral sex conversation. The support group meeting was where I had met Grace. At the time, I’d been glad to find another person who had come out of rehab with the same kind of bad attitude I had. The culture and vocabulary that come with recovery—excuse me, Recovery—rubbed me the wrong way in spite of my determination to stick with it.

  This determination didn’t spring from any special virtue on my part. I mean, what choice did I or anyone else like me have? Once you were cured of vampirism, that was it—you couldn’t be reinfected, no way, no how, no sir, why, Dracula himself wouldn’t be able to turn you. The clinic staff would be telling you that even as they were strapping you down and preparing the injection. Cure and vaccination in one handy vial! Modern medicine, eh? Who would have imagined?