Fantasy

by Rich Horton

  Jayn hesitated, then left the scroll where it was. After that it was the work of but a moment to slip into the nursery and leave the package by the royal crib. He hesitated at the nursery door on the way back, and that was the only thing that saved him.

  Someone else was in the queen’s chamber.

  Lyassa crept across the floor and, glancing several times at the bed to make sure her mistress was still sleeping, she took the letter.

  So that was the real reason you slipped your mistress that draught. Not giving the poor girl a chance to change her mind, are we? Who do you really plan to deliver that letter to?

  Lyassa left the chamber immediately and returned to her own room. The way was clear now for Jayn to slip out through the garderobe with none the wiser, and he knew that was exactly what he should do.

  Jayn turned to the sleeping girl. You’re in a sorry pass, Majesty, when a thief like me serves you better than your own.

  Jayn waited as long as he dared, then crept into the servant’s room with all the stealth and skill he could muster and stole the letter back.

  Timon, as promised, was waiting for him in the dark cavern beneath the castle. “Is it done?”

  Jayn sighed. “Do I die if I say it is?”

  “That’s answer enough. Jayn, you and I both know there’s nothing I can swear that you’ll believe, so let me simply say this: If you try anything foolish, you will certainly die. It’s more or less the same choice you’ve had all along. Here’s your gold, by the way. I’m not carrying it for you.”

  Jayn took the bag, but he remained on guard. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the Serpent’s Path, of course. ‘Safely out of Wylandia.’ That was the deal, remember.”

  “I remember. But after?”

  Timon sighed. “Jayn, for a thief and a rogue you worry too much.”

  * * * *

  It was the fourth day of their return journey. They had made camp once more at the highest point of the pass, looking out over the plains of Wylandia. Once more Jayn had been summoned from a sound sleep, only this time, when he glanced back at the fire, he was a little relieved to see that he was not, in fact, still sleeping.

  Even so, Timon was waiting for him on the ridge. The magician didn’t say anything at first. He just stood looking out on the distant plain and a sky full of stars.

  “If you’re ready to kill me now, just do it. No suggestions for jumping off a cliff in the morning or any of that nonsense. Please do me the courtesy of being direct.”

  He sensed rather than saw the magician smile. “I am always direct… in my fashion. I see you burned the letter.”

  “Yes.” Jayn wasn’t surprised that Timon knew all about that, though he knew he should have been.

  “Why?”

  “If you already know what was in the letter, then you know why.”

  Timon sighed. “That’s just it—I do know what was in the letter, and I don’t know why you burned it. I want you to tell me. I think it’s important.”

  “If that’s true, first tell me what the letter said.”

  “I don’t know,” Timon said simply.

  Jayn put his hands on his hips. “You just said—”

  “—that I know what was in the letter. I did and I do. It was the letter of an unhappy young woman reaching out to an old friend. Am I wrong?”

  Jayn thought about it. “No. You’re not wrong. All right: I burned the letter because it was dangerous to keep it.”

  “Dangerous for whom?”

  “For me, for all concerned…all right, for her especially if it came into the hands of her lord the king, who is not noted for his compassion. It’s best this way.”

  Timon nodded. “Because the old friend she was reaching out to was a former playmate who today happens to be the heir of Morushe. Yes, you were right to burn it. But doing the right thing is not part of your reputation.”

  “Nor yours, if I may say, yet I have to ask this: did you send me there to steal that letter? Was that silly gift just the pretext?”

  For a moment the magician acted as if he hadn’t heard. When he spoke again it was as if he were speaking on another subject entirely. “Like the Wylandian Dun breeding stock itself, there are many admirable traits of the royal bloodline of Wylandia: they tend to be brave, and honest, and shrewd. They also tend to be bad-tempered and stubborn.”

  “Pardon me, magician, but this is well known, though there are few who would say as much to their faces, and certainly not the current king.”

  Timon smiled. “So if, perhaps, one wished to effect a change in their behavior, one might look for more indirect methods?”

  Jayn thought about this. “Such as?”

  “Such as preventing a misunderstanding between a young married couple from turning into something more intractable. Such as leaving a sweet and thoughtful gift which the king himself forgot to do, on the occasion of the birth of his heir. Such as, in the face of that gift, a queen might, perhaps, reconsider her harsh appraisal of her new husband and treat him with a little more patience. Such that the king, in turn, might come to know his queen a little better and in turn treat her with more of the gentleness she needs and deserves.”

  “’The smallest seeds grow the mightiest trees,’” Jayn said, repeating an old proverb.

  “Not always,” Timon said, “but everything large or small has to start somewhere.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe the new prince of Wylandia will grow up to be a mite less of a bellicose bastard than his father. One can but hope.”

  “How did you know that I would steal that letter? For that matter, how did you know about the letter in the first place and the possible consequences?”

  The magician didn’t answer directly. “You were born with a talent for moving quietly and tricking locks. So you became a thief. It would have been strange if you had not, yes?”

  “True, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “Just that it’s the same for me, Jayn. Hidden things, remember? I was born with the talent to see the places where history turns. It’s not that I want to—I have to. There came a time when I could no longer ignore what I saw…for good or ill.”

  “So it was all pre-ordained?” Jayn asked. He sounded bitter.

  “Don’t confuse possibility with destiny, Jayn. I knew about the letter, yes, and how it might fall into the wrong hands. I did not know for certain that you would take it.”

  “What if I hadn’t?”

  Timon shrugged. “Then you wouldn’t have been the man I judged you.”

  Jayn looked out toward the stars. “You’re not what everyone supposes you to be, Timon the Black.”

  “For that matter, neither are you. No surprise. It’s not ‘everyone’ who gets to decide who a man is. Still, for reputation’s sake I’ll keep your secret if you’ll keep mine. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. Shall we swear binding oaths?” Jayn asked, smiling.

  The magician smiled too. “No need. I trust you.”

  INVISIBLE, by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Over the past few months something painful and awkward had come into the light. Ray was never quite able to define it, and of course did not feel he could check out this perception with anyone else. It would be an odd thing to say, and he knew he had a reputation for saying odd things, although no one had actually told him so.

  There were days he could barely stand to open his eyes. Something in the atmosphere, perhaps, that stung the cornea. Every object he looked at was outlined in bright white light. A brilliance he was not supposed to see, a visibility not meant for him. These haloing strokes appeared hesitant, as if part of an unsure painting.

  It was the kind of light he imagined you would see at the end of the world: a sad, quiet fading of form and color, as if all earthly materials were dissolving from a mass failure of conviction.

  Although he did not expect confirmation of his anxieties, or really want one, Ray listened to the hourly radio weather reports, noting the announcer’s tone w
hen he spoke words such as “overcast,” “upper atmosphere,” and “visibility.” There was anxiety in the slight, random trembling of the otherwise smooth voice. Did the weatherman hold something back? The answers were all there, he suspected, floating through the air, hiding in the aftertaste of water, momentarily visible in the bright, painful regions of reflected sun, if one only knew the right way to see, to taste, to hear.

  He called his wife two or three times during the day to see how she was feeling, thinking she might be sensing something similar, but he was unable to ask her directly. At some point they’d stopped authenticating each other’s sadder perceptions about their places in the universe.

  At least in the office there were few windows, and the predictable lines of the cubicles were comfortably familiar. Weather ceased to be a factor once he arrived at work.

  Anyone up for lunch? Ray had waited an hour or so for someone to make the invitation. He normally timed his work so he could be available any time between noon and one.

  He stood up in his cubicle. Several other heads popped up out of the maze of short, upholstered partitions, like prairie dogs out of their holes. The others waved to the speaker—Marty, a lead programmer— and grabbed their coats. After an awkward pause with Marty staring straight at him, Ray tentatively raised a hand and waved as well. Marty’s expression didn’t change. He couldn’t have missed Ray’s intention.

  Ray saved his work, jotted down some notes, stood and slipped on his coat. He got to the elevators just as the doors were closing. His coworkers stared out at him without recognition. No one tried to stop the doors. He waved again, said, “Hey!” He ran down four flights to the lobby. He almost ran over a woman on the second floor landing. He stopped to apologize but could see the distaste in her eyes (or was it pity?). Out of breath, he reached the outside doors. He watched as they pulled away, all of them jammed into Marty’s green Ford. How did they get out there so quickly? Again he waved as the car swung past the entrance and out the driveway. A woman from another office scooted by him and out the door. It suddenly embarrassed him that she’d seen him with his hand up, waving to no one, greeting nothing as if nothing might wave back, and he lowered it.

  He went back upstairs to his cubicle, hoping no one had seen him return. He went back to work on the day’s projects, not thinking to remove his coat. From time to time hunger pains stroked his belly like nervous fingers. He had a lunch in the office refrigerator—he always had a lunch in the office refrigerator—but he didn’t bother to go get it.

  * * * *

  The sky outside went from a misty white to a deep blue, then to grays and oranges, as if painted on an enormous turning disk. He did not learn this from looking out the window but saw it reflected in his computer screen. Days passed in this awkwardly glimpsed view of the world. He could feel his hands on the keyboard begin the painful petrifaction that must surely lead to transparency. At some point Marty and the others wandered past as they returned from lunch, louder than usual. Marty eventually brought some papers by for Ray to look at. There was no mention of the missed lunch. Ray thought perhaps his intentions had been misunderstood. They were all well-meaning people here. The world was full of well-meaning people. It wasn’t their fault he didn’t know how to conduct himself.

  At the end of the day he took the stairs down to the parking lot, leaving fifteen minutes early. He did this every day. It was unlikely he’d be fired for such an offense, but he somewhat enjoyed imagining the possibility. Perhaps an announcement would be made. Perhaps he would be forced to exit through the reception area carrying his box of meager belongings as other employees stood and watched. Would any of them wish him well in his future endeavors?

  Outside the air shimmered with possibility. He did his best to ignore it.

  Traffic was again heavy and slow, the cars unable to maneuver beyond the occasional lane change. There was a quality of anger in the way people sped up and slowed down, changed lanes, slipped into the breakdown lane in order to make an illegal pass on the left. The anger made Ray feel as if some explosion was imminent, some volcanic eruption of blame he might drown in.

  But he didn’t mind the traffic per se—it gave him the opportunity to gaze into the interiors of the other cars, to see what the people were doing when they thought no one was looking, observe the little things (singing, grooming, picking their noses) they did to divert tedium, follow the chase of expressions across their faces, all of them no doubt feeling safe and assured of their invisibility.

  His was simply one more can awash in a sea of metal. He was content to wait until the tide brought him home.

  * * * *

  Janice didn’t turn around when Ray walked into the kitchen. “It’s almost ready,” she said. “We have to be there by six-thirty. We can’t be late.”

  “If we’re late, she might think we’re not coming. We can’t let that happen.”

  “No, we can’t.” She dealt slices of tomato rapidly into the stew. “So, what did you do for lunch today? Did you go out with anybody?”

  She always tried to sound casual about it. She always failed.

  “No.” He started to make up a satisfactory reason, then gave up. “I worked through.” He looked over her shoulder into the bubbling liquid, always fascinated by the way carrots and meat, potatoes, peas, and corn blended simply through constant collision. He pulled back when he remembered how much she hated him looking over her shoulder when she cooked. “How did you do today?”

  She dropped a handful of peas into the pot. She filled a pan with water, slid it onto the burner, took two eggs from the fridge. “No one noticed my new hair. A hundred and twenty dollars. If it had been anybody else, they’d say something. Even if they didn’t like it.”

  She stood there with her back still turned, eggs in hand. Ray reached to touch her arm but stopped an inch or so away. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know why that happens.”

  “It’s always the same conversation, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s like talking about the weather for us.”

  “It shouldn’t happen that way,” he said, not knowing what else to say. When she didn’t respond, he started to go upstairs to change.

  “But what I hate most is that it’s all just too damn silly!”

  He paused in the doorway. “It’s not silly if it’s hurting you.” She was crying, still with her back to him. The right thing to do would be to put his arms around her. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to say that he, too, felt it was silly and stupid and he felt small and petty every time his own feelings were similarly hurt. And he didn’t want to say that he was angry with her for not being better at this than he was. She’d always been the more socially adept of the two of them—if she couldn’t solve this, what hope did he have?

  “There are people without homes,” she said, “people who have lost everything. There are people whose every day is a desperate gesture, and here I am crying because some silly women at the office where I work didn’t notice my new hairdo!”

  “I know. But it’s more than that.”

  “It’s more than that. It’s the lunches. It’s the conversations. It’s all the moments you’re not invited in.”

  “It’s feeling like whatever you say, they’re not hearing you. That no matter how much you wave your arms and jump up and down, they’re not seeing you. You feel stupid and crazy and paranoid, because you know it doesn’t make much sense—it has to be something you’re doing, but you never can find a good enough reason in the things you’re doing to explain it.”

  “And when you…when we die, no one but our daughter is going to remember we were ever here.”

  “I just can’t believe that,” he said.

  “Really? You don’t believe that?”

  “I can’t accept it,” he said.

  * * * *

  The high-school parking lot was full and then some. It was all senior kids in the show, and for many of these parents it would be their fin
al opportunity to see their children as children, even though so few of them looked like children anymore.

  “I never imagined her this way,” he said.

  “What way?”

  “Grown up. It’s ridiculous, but I never imagined this day would actually come.”

  “Wouldn’t it be sad if it never came, Ray?”

  “Oh, of course. But still, it feels as if she just went out to play one day, and never came back.”

  They ended up in the overflow parking by a rundown grocery. They crossed the street nervously, watching the traffic. Visibility was poor. Wet streets and black, shiny pavement, multicolored lights drifting in the wind.

  Ray kept glancing at the front entrance as he pushed forward. Around them the headlights and car reflections floated randomly, like glowing insects looking for somewhere solid to land.

  The lobby was packed with parents and their children, leaving little room for movement. Molly would already be on stage, waiting nervously behind the curtain. Janice wanted to rush into the auditorium, always afraid they’d be left without a seat, but Ray held back. Like Janice he hated crowds, but he needed to take in this part of it one final time. He would never experience this again. No more opportunities to act like other parents, in front of other parents.

  These were families he had seen at dozens of events over the years, not that he really knew any of them. Some looked so pleased they actually glowed. But most had the anxious look of someone who has forgotten, and forgotten what they have forgotten.

  He couldn’t focus on any single group or conversation for more than a few seconds. He closed his eyes against the growing insect buzz, opened them again to clusters of colored dots vibrating asyn­chronously. If he were only a little smarter, he might understand what was going on here.

  A man a few feet away exclaimed “Hey there!” and started toward him. Ray recognized him as a neighbor from a few blocks away—the daughter had been in Molly’s classes for years. Ray felt his face grow warm as the neighbor—Tom? Was his name Tom?—held out his hand. Deep in his pants pocket Ray’s hand itched, sweaty, as he began to pull it out.