Elemental

by Steven Savile

  No one knew if Angie’s leaving meant that she was gone temporarily or for good again, but the fact was she had only driven as far as the levee a few miles downriver where all the teenagers hung out and drank beer and hillbilly lemonade and hooked up and broke up in endless adolescent geometries, all of which Angie had run away from once already. What awoke Quinn from his vigilant, blanket-huddled doze in the small hours of the night was that Angie Stoat cursed softly when she bruised her hip bumping into the corner of a picnic table.

  It was not raining that night and the moon was gibbous, nearly full, drenching the landscape in the sort of milky, pearls-on-black-velvet luminosity that drives poets to put words on paper. Quinn watched Angie Stoat stand before the coop, her fingers curling into the chicken wire. He watched her step back and kick off her boots decisively, strip off the faded blue jeans and the sleeveless black T-shirt that said “Zeke’s Custom Shop” on the front, watched her unlatch the coop and walk in naked. She had a tattoo of a dagger entwined with ivy on her right shoulder blade and her naked body twined about the angel’s like ivy in the moonlight, limbs winding, one pale hand seeking to turn the angel’s face from its moon-fixed gaze, shadow-tangled hair spilling like ink over the angel’s shoulder, mouth seeking heat.

  To what avail? None. The angel stood firm in the moonlight, legs planted like columns, head tilted; maybe, just maybe, Quinn thought he saw the angel’s wings quiver faintly when Angie Stoat disengaged herself with a short, rueful laugh, but that could have been a shivery trick of the silvery moon. She stood hugging herself and regarding the angel, then stepped out of the coop, latching the door behind her. Naked by moonlight Angie looked only seventeen—which she was—and too thin with shadows pooling in the hollows of her loins and revealing the frailty of her ribcage; but her skin was silver in the moonlight and when she stretched up her arms to put on her T-shirt her nipples were as dark as plums.

  Leaving, Angie Stoat caught Quinn’s wakeful eye and paused and smiled an ambiguous smile that was neither triumphant nor defeated and was definitely not seventeen years old. “You would have tried it too,” she said with a shrug, and strode off into the night on her long, lean, blue-jeanned legs. Quinn blinked his bleary eyes and settled back into his doze, not entirely sure he had ever awakened.

  So passed the fifth night, which may well have been the sixth, and it cannot be considered odd that neither Quinn Parnell nor Angie Stoat ever spoke of what was seen and done in those dark, mercuric hours, for a glance exchanged by moonlight is both conspiratorial and a secret of the most fragile sort that may be destroyed by a single word.

  On the sixth day the heat was worse, causing the air to shimmer and the cottonwood seeds to burst their pods and drift about the backyard like the down of molting swans. It was in fact too hot to do anything but gossip, and that languidly. Garrett Ainsworth brought out a couple of patio umbrellas to provide shade and gave out free ice for the coolers, since by now everyone just brought whatever refreshments they wanted. A lot of the parents brought Kool-Aid for the kids because it was cheaper than pop, and Hilary Putney-Smoot brought fresh mint from her herb garden for all the people who set out jars and made sun tea. Everyone took turns making sure that Quinn had something to drink and didn’t dehydrate in the heat. Despite having shaved yesterday, he was looking more haggard today and a few people like Claire Williams and Garrett Ainsworth were beginning to wonder privately if it wasn’t time to start worrying about him. If they had known what happened last night, they might have guessed that Quinn was suffering from lack of sleep and a voyeurist’s hangover, but they would have been wrong. Quinn’s increased preoccupation had in fact nothing to do with Angie Stoat’s attempted celestial seduction and everything to do with the angel’s slow deterioration.

  It was still Quinn who stayed, you see, and Quinn who noticed how the angel’s tawny locks hung now lank and untended, how the angel’s sculpted torso rose and fell with the effort of respiration, how it carried its wings imperceptibly lower and the feathers hung limp in the torpid heat. The once-dazzlingly-white cloth that girded its loins was merely white, no whiter than the cottonwood seeds blowing about the yard and catching in the chicken wire. The angel’s naked feet were grimy with dust and there was a streak of dirt on one bare shoulder where little Rick DeKalb had thrown a dirt-clod at it. Because he could not give voice to these things, Quinn stayed silent and suffered a grinding pain in his heart that he knew to be an intimation of mortality not his own.

  The main debate in Garrett Ainsworth’s backyard that day was whether or not any events of a miraculous nature had occurred in Utopia since the angel had arrived. There was Miss Jessamine’s nasturtium, which had unexpectedly revived, and Del Danby’s black labrador retriever Lucy that had given birth to a litter of no less than twelve pups on Tuesday, but these were rather dubious as miracles go. There was Angie Stoat’s prodigal return, of course, but this was not as miraculous as would be, say, her graduating from high school on time next spring. Madoc Jones claimed to have heard the voice of God in the woods behind the old Oosterberg place, but everyone knew he went out into the woods to hunt for hallucinogenic mushrooms, so that didn’t really count. Besides, he was Welsh.

  In the early evening hours it cooled off a bit, and Patsy Tucker donated the usage of her croquet set for anyone who was interested in playing, which it turned out was quite a few. Bobby MacCreary fell in the creek trying to make a tricky shot after Claire Williams knocked his ball out of the course, but declared that it was refreshing and jumped in again to prove it. After that a lot of the kids wanted to jump in the creek, but then Bobby MacReary discovered he had a leech on his ankle and almost passed out when Garrett pulled it off, and after that no one wanted to go in the creek. Claire Williams won three out of four games of croquet and admitted that she and her husband used to play it a great deal at their friends the VanderKemps’s summer house and then her lips compressed into a thin line and she wouldn’t say anything more about it.

  Around 7:30 p.m. Bob Angler—who wasn’t supposed to be driving—and a couple of his friends pulled up with a mess of brook trout and a keg of beer and organized a fish fry. All in all, despite the heat it turned out that the sixth day was a good one and everyone except Quinn went home after dark declaring that they didn’t remember when they’d had so much fun. Which was a good thing since this would be the last day, although of course no one knew this at the time.

  That night the moon rose full, and it was so round and perfect that you knew last night’s moon had only been for practice. For a long time after dark, sounds of life could still be heard throughout the town, people shouting, cars passing, doors slamming, and occasionally music, which was not surprising what with it being Saturday night and a full moon. But after a while, in the hours between when the latest revelers went to bed and the earliest risers rose from it, everything became silent and still. The moon was at its apex then, small and bright and high overhead, lifting the angel’s regard to its own apex with raised chin, bare-throated and vulnerable in the moonlight.

  And it was then that Quinn Parnell got up. All his joints were stiff and made clicking sounds when he moved and the muscles in his legs were knotted and cramped. He hobbled over to the coop like an old, old man and supported himself by hooking his fingers in the chicken wire the way Angie Stoat had done, and he stared at the angel.

  And slowly, slowly—though not compared to how it followed the orbit of sun and moon—the angel lowered its moon-fixed gaze and looked Quinn full in the face. Its wings quivered, for sure this time, raising a little breeze that stirred the bits of cottonwood seed stuck in the chicken wire.

  How long did they stand staring at one another? Quinn never knew, only that he never ever forgot it and never ever told another living soul. When he could look away he did, and unlatched the coop with hands that trembled before turning his back and hobbling away on pain-racked legs. When he reached the farther picnic table, he stopped and waited.

  There was no sound and no chang
e in the subtle moonlight, but presently a brief wind sprang up and died again, and Quinn waited another full minute afterward before turning around and seeing that the coop was empty and there was no sign of an angel anywhere in Garrett Ainsworth’s backyard.

  It took a while, but after that things pretty much went back to normal.

  Tiger in the Night

  BY BRIAN ALDISS

  Brian W. Aldiss started publishing stories in 1954. His first science fiction novel, Non-Stop, was released in 1955. More than fifty years later he is still filling our bookshelves with tales of spectacular worlds, now with more than forty novels and 300 short stories to his credit. His short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” was the inspiration for the 2001 Steven Spielberg film A.I. Aldiss has also written several volumes of poetry, as well as highly acclaimed critical works on both writing and science fiction.

  A resident of the United Kingdom, Aldiss has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, British Science Fiction Award, and John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He was honored as SFWA Grand Master in 1999 and has three times been Guest of Honor or Toastmaster of the World Science Fiction Convention. In 2004 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In June 2005, he was awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for “services to literature.”

  Brian Aldiss lives in Oxford, England. Visit his Web site at http://brianaldiss.co.uk/.

  It’s three o’clock in the morning by the parish clock when there comes a knock at my door.

  “Don’t go, Will,” says my wife. But I heeded not the wishes of women in my young days. Up I get. The Lord God lashes me on, just to squeeze a line of verse from me.

  A ragged-trousered boy stands at my door, shivering in the dark.

  “It ain’t yet cleared, mister,” he says.

  “Lead on,” I say. Off we go through the night, and he goes barefoot.

  I ask him why his mother cannot find him shoes in which to walk the streets of our capital.

  He says, “Ain’t got no shoes. Ain’t got no mother.”

  The streets are all but deserted, cold, damp, cruel.

  So we come to the walls of the zoo.

  “It ain’t yet cleared,” he says again.

  I toss him a farthing and I climb the wall, as I could do in my young days.

  How black is the night—and blacker yet inside the zoo.

  I stand there. I wait. Devil a star overhead.

  A man approaches with a bull’s-eye lantern burning dim. All I see is the dull illumination and his dull face. He’s tall and clean-shaven. I know him for a respectable man, though I hold respectability to be a poor enough quality. Nor do I like him because of his trade: but I did him a favor once and now he repays me.

  “It’s not yet been cleared,” he tells me. “This is illegal in the eyes of the law, Will.” He calls me Will. I call him Mr. Phipps.

  “Let’s trust that the eyes of the law are blind,” I tell him.

  We make our way along between cages. All about are sounds of animal suffering, low cries, snuffles, moans: the sighs and gasps of those who should be free. Which is superior, I wonder—those who cage or those who are caged? I smell the odors of their droppings. I am pained by their pain. The bars gleam like drawn bayonets as we pass by.

  We come to a certain shed, where Mr. Phipps says, “It’s not dangerous. I have him pent.”

  Then in the stinking dark he sticks out a hand to me, a hand narrow and pale such as belonged to Judas Iscariot. I place a half-sovereign on his palm and he opens the shed door.

  Oh, but it’s black there, black as our sins, a cruel black where no good ever came looking. No half-sovereign would ever admit a caring deity here!

  The light from the lantern illumines the tiger’s head. Its eyes burn as if from another star.

  I cannot breathe for the wonder of that pent head. In its great beautiful skull burn cunning and ferocity, uncontaminated by intellect.

  Mr. Phipps is explaining. “It’s the wars, Will. That damned Napoleon!” He indicates the imprisoned animal. “They snatched him from a French place—a menagerie, they told me. Smuggled him over here, drugged, in a chest. It ain’t legal so far. I got to try for a sustificate. It ain’t yet cleared.”

  I don’t listen to him. I stare at the great beast. It makes no sound. The tiger, the dumb tiger, speaks a different language of a different world. He seems to exude both hate and love and things beyond. His head has been wedged between two bars. He has a collar clamped to one bar. In order to express his discomfort, his body constantly shifts position, sitting, standing, crouching, crouching, standing, sitting. The wonderful composition of stripes and colors burns even in the dimness, burns into my soul.

  That the Lord God made such a creature! Not for us but for itself, for its savage mate. It is of unearthly beauty—and all about it should be the solace of green and striped foliage, the boundless freedoms of the savannah.

  Not this loathesome hut, these vile bars.

  I burst into tears. Savage tears, tears that burn.

  “Be a man, Will,” says Mr. Phipps.

  But who would desire to be a man when men do such cruel things?

  “Let it go free,” I say. My voice chokes.

  “What? Have this brute at liberty to roam our green and pleasant land? It would eat everyone. You’re mad in the head, Will, always were.”

  I take a final look at this masterpiece of nature and then I run from there.

  My soul cries out at the villainy of it, the injustice.

  For years, I suffer in spirit with that glorious cat, and can say nothing.

  Then a verse bursts forth from my mind, as God willed.

  What immortal hand or eye

  Will aid you in that dreadful sty?

  Man forges prisons, forges laws—

  You the freedom of your jaws.

  No, it will never do! A poor lame thing. At least in verse I can liberate the splendid creature. I destroy that verse and write instead—

  Tiger, tiger, burning bright,

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy dreadful symmetry?

  The strange case of Jared Spoon, who went to pieces for love.

  BY STEL PAVLOU

  Stel Pavlou makes stuff up for a living. So far he’s made up a movie and two novels: He wrote and coproduced the feature film The 51st State, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Carlyle, and penned both Decipher (2002) and Gene (2004). He hopes to make a few more things up before anyone catches on and stops him.

  When asked about the origin of “Jared Spoon,” Pavlou playfully replied: “I like Kurt Vonnegut stories. What got me into SF was Vonnegut, Adams, Dali, and Escher. Not because I wanted to be like them, but rather I saw in their surrealistic noodlings something very familiar. I was then promptly told by publishers that I was derivative and I’ve been writing in a different voice ever since. Well, this is a journey back to my starting point. My early love affair with juxtaposition. She’s insightful and sardonic, and what a pair of tits.”

  Pavlou lives in Rochester, New York. Visit his Web site at www.stelpavlou.com.

  One day she just took a knife to him.

  She said, “I’m gonna stick this to ya if you look at me that way again.”

  He was shocked, obviously. He had a mouthful of lunch.

  “What way?”

  “Or how about I cut off a finger? Yeah, one of ya fuckin’ fingers. See how you like that?”

  So he wiped his mouth on the napkin. Set his sandwich down. Almost like, should he get out of this alive it would be nice to get back to the sandwich.

  In the end she didn’t stab him with it. She threw it at him. It took a lobe clean off.

  It bled a lot.

  He responded with a kind of Parkinson’s twitch.

  She didn’t have a name after that.

  He called her Girl 77. There was no telling how many personalities she really had rattling around in that wonder
fully packaged though fucked-up brain of hers. If he had to sit and count them all he’d say seventy-seven was a good guesstimate, but don’t quote him. She was full of surprises. That was why he loved her.

  That was the day Jared Spoon decided to quit smoking.

  The letter read: My dearest, darling Jared.

  Immediately he had the impression this was not from anybody he knew.

  The letter continued: I am going to send you something. I don’t want you to be alarmed. I am going to send you something very intimate. I want you to know it is sent out of love. Please keep it in your safe place until I instruct you otherwise. We shall be together very soon, my love. Yours deeply and intimately, Girl 77.

  Jared Spoon shuddered at the thought of his safe place.

  He watched Girl 77 rocking quietly on the floor.

  We shall be together very soon? How much sooner than already being together did she want?

  He decided he should put more of an effort into making a lasting impression on her.

  Jared Spoon used patches at first.

  After a while he ran out of places to put them and slapped them on the back of his neck.

  Herb Foresight thought they made him look like an armadillo. Jared Spoon didn’t bother setting him straight. Herb Foresight was an idiot.

  There is no health warning on a packet of nicotine patches.

  At first he waited until nothing arrived. By then he was up to six patches a day!

  Still Girl 77 said nothing about a delivery.

  At last he was free from the burden of options!

  He stood across the room to ask his question and hoped she wouldn’t beat the snot out of him for disturbing her.

  He said, “Girl 77, what happened to that thing you were going to send me?”

  He waited for her lolloping form to come galloping across the carpet poised to club him one. Instead, she remained inert.