Little Doors

by Paul Di Filippo

  Pike was the first member of the inalienable foursome to suggest speaking to the stranger.

  Megawatts of energy surging through the thin copper wire of his fifteen-year-old body, the glimmer-eyed Pike often led his three friends down back roads of adventure they might not have otherwise ventured on. Calla, Westbrook and Hazel both appreciated and feared their nominal leader’s wild bravado.

  They sat now on the deserted bleachers at the edge of the football field behind the school, the last class of the day half an hour behind them.

  “Turn that noise down a minute, Westy,” Pike ordered. “I want to suggest a little game.”

  The rough-featured boy bent to the huge Panasonic boom box at his feet and cut the volume, reducing Blondie’s “Call Me” to a background drone.

  “I don’t know why you don’t get yourself one of these,” said Pike, displaying a Sony Walkman big as an abridged paperback dictionary.

  “I like to share my music. Your gizmo makes it too private.”

  “I’m into being private, okay?”

  “Sure. And I’m into sharing.”

  Pushing her clunky glasses further up her small nose, Calla leaned over to inspect the Walkman. “It’s got two headphone jacks, doesn’t it, Pike? You could still share your music.” Without asking, she popped the tape out. “Devo. I like them.”

  Hazel rocked backward and laughed. “I can just picture the two of you walking side by side leashed to the same little box. What happens if you spontaneously go around opposite sides of a telephone pole?”

  “Kerchung!” Westbrook mimed a jerky fall.

  “That’s a non-issue. I’ve only got one set of headphones.”

  Calla sat back disappointedly.

  “But I didn’t want to talk about this kind of theoretical crap when I asked Westy to turn his box down. I wanted to propose a little adventure. Let’s have some fun with Chester the Molester.”

  Westbrook objected. “The magazine guy out front in his car? I don’t know … He’s really creepy.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Hazel asked.

  “Let’s try to get him to do something really evil. Then we can turn him in to the cops and be big shots.”

  “Why hassle the lousy pervert?” Calla said. “He’s just pitiful. You’re only lowering yourself to his level.”

  “I’m bored. And who says I’m living on some level higher than this guy to start with?”

  “I’d like to think—” began Calla, but she was interrupted by Pike’s abrupt leap to his feet.

  “I’m doing it now! Whether you guys are with me or not.”

  Pike gained a lead of a few yards before the others caught up with him. Rounding the building, they saw the stranger apparently slumbering in his car. His seat semi-reclined, he lay back with his glossy magazine covering his face. All the school buses had long departed, and no other kids lingered.

  Slowly they approached the car. A yard away, the stranger’s voice — accented, dark and bitter as Aztec chocolate mixed with heart’s blood—halted them dead.

  “Children of Cockaigne, I have been waiting for you.”

  * * *

  They arrived in immortal Cockaigne as always, transitionlessly, startlingly, opening their eyes first and eternally upon Piebush Meadow, near the edge of the Winetree Grove.

  Three gods regarded each other joyously, with clear-eyed intimacy. Caparisoned in elaborate greaves, gorgets, and gauntlets, caped and cowled, plumed and prinked, laced and leathered, booted and buckled, the trio—two Junoesque women and a Herculean man—stood tall as the lower limbs of the remote wine-trees, those branches themselves a good ten feet above the licorice- moss carpeting the Meadow.

  “Aniatis.”

  “Dormender.”

  “Yodsess.”

  So they named themselves, and broke into roiling laughter at the splendid sound of their own immense plangent voices.

  “How marvelous to be home again!” said the man. “I feel as if shackles have been struck from my wrists and ankles!”

  “Dormender, you name the sensation exactly!” The woman who had addressed Dormender whipped off her winged casque and released banners of thick red hair. “The eagle of my spirit soars high once again!”

  The second woman smiled also, but fatalistically, and did not remove her own shining headgear, keeping all of her corvine tresses captured, save for a stray curl or two. “Yodsess, I too experience delight at the return of the swelling passion and supernal vitality that form our birthright. But I would advise you to redon your armor. Have you forgotten the starostas? Likewise, what of our mission to rescue our lost comrade, Theriagin? There is no telling what foul manifestations in the Land may have arisen from his perverse and overlong tenancy in Castel Djurga.”

  Yodsess replaced her helm upon her noble brow, but could not resist twirling around. “Aniatis, as of old, your counsel is wise but over-sober. Let all evil crawlers crawl, all ghastly ghaunts gibber, all starostas shamble! Our function is to exult! Look at the firmament that your earthly eyes have not beheld for much too long! Marbled with sherbert clouds! Smell the odors of the pepper shrubs and squab roots! Let the warm winds arriving from their long journey across the Berryjuice Sea caress your cheek!”

  Dormender grinned, as much at Yodsess’s paean as at Aniatis’s obvious attempt to leash her own natural exuberance. “One an inebriate, one a clerk, and only I providing the voice of moderation. Ah, well, the middle path is a fine road for Dormender to travel. Come, ladies, let us leave Piebush Meadow behind, in quest of Castel Djurga.”

  So urging, Dormender adjusted the long sword yclept Salvor that was slung across his back and strode off. The women followed, and before they reached the marge of the grove they had all availed themselves of sustenance from the bushes that gave the meadow its name. Once under the trees, meaty gravy running down their chins, they snapped gourds full of heady beverage from the lowest branches and drowned their lunches in tart wine.

  “Remember you the Pact made here?” Dormender asked jokingly.

  Aniatis and Yodsess blushed at the thought of their old conflicts, and in what pleasant manner they had been resolved. Then the latter answered, “I remember.”

  “Yes, I too,” said Aniatis. “I remember everything.”

  * * *

  Pike could not restrain his elation at the incriminating words spoken by the foreign creep. “You heard him guys, he offered us coke! Man, your ass is grass now, weirdo! C’mon, let’s go call the cops!”

  Much to their surprise, the burly man seemed unruffled by the gleeful threats of the children’s leader. He removed the magazine from his face, revealing in profile an olive complexion, chubby cheeks, a splayed, blemish-pitted nose and a goatee. Far from frightening, he most closely resembled an opera impresario in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Out of sight, his hand maneuvered the seat control to power himself upright. He turned to face the four teenagers fully, captivating them with his dark eyes.

  “Have you never felt the wrongness of your lives? Do you not all experience the odd sense of being exiled? Isn’t this world deeply unsatisfying somehow, a pale parody of what might truly exist? Yes, people turn to sense-numbing drugs to escape just such a feeling of emptiness. But you misperceived my speech. I named not the crippling white powder cocaine, but the peerless realm of Cockaigne.”

  Pike hesitated a moment in the face of the man’s assurance and subject-changing tactics, but recovered enough bravado to insist, “You can’t get out of this with a lot of fancy double-talk, mister. You’re nothing but a lousy drug pusher, and you’re going down.”

  “True, I do intend to offer you a drug. But it’s a drug not of this world. Liberating, enlightening, transporting—”

  “That’s what all the pushers say! I’ve heard everything I need to hear now.” Pike whirled toward his friends. “Guys, let’s—”

  His companions obviously failed to share his certainty. Silent till now, they exchanged timid glances among themselves before Westbrook spoke
.

  “Pike, admit it—we’ve all felt exactly the feelings he’s describing. None of us truly belongs here. And that name, Cockaigne —it means something to me.”

  Hazel gripped Pike by the wrist, nailed him with her ardent gaze. “I can almost picture the place he’s talking about.”

  “Me too,” said Calla.

  Pike shook his head in confusion. “This is too weird. He’s hypnotized you three and now you’re all trying to hypnotize me. Somehow you’re putting pictures in my brain—”

  “No,” said the stranger, “those are memories.”

  Pike lurched a few feet away, then halted. The man levered open his door and emerged. Squat, wearing a wool suit, he held an old-fashioned satchel in his left hand. He extended his right hand, and Westbrook shook it.

  “My name is Doctor Iatros. Take me to a quiet, unfrequented place where we might talk. Quickly. Cockaigne needs you as soon as possible.”

  * * *

  Many staunch words of comfort from Dormender and vast quantities of reassuring petting from Aniatis and Yodsess had been needed to calm the lumpkin enough to secure speech from the creature. At first, when encountered in the foothills of the Sugar Mountains, the quivering, frightened little furball (when standing, only as tall as the shins of the godlings) had retracted all its limbs and tried to hide behind an outcropping of pink-veined rock candy. Prodded from its niche, the lumpkin had deliberately rolled toward the nearby Great Gravy River as if to drown itself. Rescued from this fate, the timorous citizen of Cockaigne had required fully an hour of coaxing to reach the point where it could sensibly converse.

  “Now, lumpkin,” cajoled Dormender, “speak truly of what drove you to fear us, the legendary protectors of your race.”

  The lumpkin’s voice piped bitterly. “Many and many a century have passed since any of your kind walked the Land to offer a shield or sword on our behalf. The only one of your breed remaining never leaves Castel Djurga. And he is no friend to any who dares trespass on the Jumbles.”

  “The Jumbles?” queried Aniatis. “What unknown territory do you name?”

  “For hundreds of parasangs around Castel Djurga, the Land has been rendered fulsomely and morbidly rebarbative. No feature of the landscape offers solace or nourishment, the rude denizens affright, and the very sunlight that falls heavily there abrades the skin.”

  Yodsess smacked her mailed fist upon a cinnamon gumdrop big as a hassock. The sweet boulder absorbed the force of her blow, but not the sting of her words. “The Land bordering Castel Djurga was always the fairest spot in this paradise, a harmonious precinct of laughing waters and succulent pasturage! How could it now be so perverted?”

  Dormender frowned. “Only through the madness of our comrade Theriagin, I fear.”

  Aniatis quizzed the lumpkin further. “You cite unkind inhabitants of these Jumbles. Are they the starostas?”

  “No, worse! Even the starostas are affrighted of the Jumbles-dwellers, and venture not within their grasp. If I may be so bold, these dreadful beings resemble—they resemble you, your worships! But primitive, cloddish, puny travesties of your divine features.”

  None of the three divinities had any response to this puzzling information, and after a small amount of additional interrogation, they bade the lumpkin to bounce off on his way.

  “Too much vilely sweet and egocentric solitude has rendered poor Theriagin a pustule of sickness upon the Land,” Yodsess declaimed.

  “Judge not our fellow too harshly,” Dormender urged. “Any of us might have fallen into the same trap.”

  “Righting this wrong upon the Land must be our primary duty,” Aniatis reminded them. “Rescue and rehabilitation of Theriagin comes second, if at all.”

  “I recall the dark labors we faced when first we arrived in the Land,” Dormender said reflectively. “Those lessons will stand us in good stead now.”

  Yodsess raised her sharp labrys called Insight. “Onward then to Castel Djurga!”

  * * *

  Pike chivvied out the two younger kids who had been using the space under the gymnasium’s back stairs as a lovers’ lane. Arranging several plastic milk crates in a rough semicircle on the greasy gravel, he fumed silently while his companions stared worshipfully at the weird Doctor Iatros. The intriguing stranger had refused to answer any of their questions until they were all settled down on their hard waffle- bottomed stools, shielded on three sides by graffiti-scribbled damp concrete. From the mildewy shadows, they could look down a long open slope of sunlit grass and spot any intruders long before they themselves could be surprised.

  Once arranged in this manner, with two children to either side, Doctor Iatros began to spin his tale.

  “Ten million years ago, I created a world—”

  Immediately Pike interrupted with a derisive exclamation. “Shit, man! I thought the dope spiel was lame, but now we get fairy tales on top of it!”

  “My words are indeed deemed myths in my pocket universe, by those who know no better. Here they are literal facts. But even as myths, they contain much truth. Fairy tales too are instructive, but not in the same manner. Now, shall I continue?”

  The other three chorused yes, and Pike was forced to consent grudgingly as well.

  “Ten million years ago, I created a small universe and named it Cockaigne. It was intended to be an Edenic place, offering its inhabitants an easy life, yet one not without its heroic challenges. Unfortunately, due to my extant immature skills, my universe contained an inherent flaw. A coarseness in the quantum weave allowed all higher intelligences to leak out into the ambient multiverse. I watched with intense dismay as the souls whom I had intended as the guardians of my Land evaporated after only a short existence and pinwheeled away, indestructible but lost, across the cosmos, finding unnatural homes in a myriad of other forms.

  “Without sentient guardians to help shape Cockaigne, my creation began to degenerate. Mourning, I left it behind to seek out the original lost inhabitants wherever they might be in the cosmos—a laborious quest, believe me—and offer them the chance to return and help me repair my beautiful world. I cannot transplant you permanently to your native Land, for the congenital flaw remains, irreparable without destroying the place and starting over. But I have found a way to insure that your visits are frequent and extensive enough to be wholly satisfying and productive and beneficial, both for the Land and for your own souls.”

  Doctor Iatros fell silent. Westbrook ventured, “Are you, like, God?” The doctor laughed and patted his stomach. “With this body? Hardly!” Hazel said, “Do you have any pictures of Cockaigne?” “No,” replied Iatros, “for your kind of cameras do not work in the Land.” Ever practical, Calla asked, “How do we get there and back?”

  As his answer, Iatros reached down to the satchel at his feet, opened it, and withdrew a square of blotter paper about the size of an index card. The paper was printed with smeary blue watercolor lines dividing it into four cells; inside each cell a different blurry symbol shone with a faint indigo radiance: sword, spear, double-bladed axe, and flail.

  Pike jumped up, nearly banging his head on the underslant of the stairs. “That’s acid! LSD, pure and simple.”

  Iatros paid no heed to the accusation. “These tabs have been soaked in a supraliminal drug of my own devising, tailored to the physiology of your species, which allows your souls to awaken fully and travel astrally to Cockaigne, where they will automatically manifest bodies out of the templates I have installed there. Once embodied, all will come naturally to you. Your return is likewise automatic, upon the timely waning of the drug in your mundane veins. I recommend taking the drug in unison, while maintaining physical contact of some sort. Ideally, to facilitate your temporary abandonment of this world, your psychic rebirth, you should also be naked.”

  Pike was beside himself. “Naked! Naked! Now we’re taking orders from a sex pervert too! Have you guys all gone totally nuts?”

  “I will not be present when you use the drug. But might I sugg
est that you make your first experiment soon? I have many light-years yet to cover in my quest, and I would like to leave you with a supply of the drug while I’m away. But not before you satisfy yourselves as to its use.”

  “Right, right,” Pike ranted. “Hook us now for free, then make us pay in blood and sex games. Well, I’m not biting, Doctor Asshole! Let’s just see what the cops have to say about all this.”

  Bent over, Pike scuttled for the exit. Halfway there, Iatros called out, “Pike! Recall Castel Djurga!”

  Pike stiffened, then collapsed to the gravel. His friends hastened to his side and helped him up, laying him down across several crates. Within minutes his eyes fluttered open, and he reached toward Iatros.

  “Hand that stuff over, Doc. Cockaigne needs us.”

  * * *

  Aniatis pulled her begored and steaming spear named Caritas from the guts of the starosta, and the hideous creature, formerly pinned to the trunk of a broadcloth tree, fell to the turf. The mortally wounded yet still belligerent monster whipped its many suckered tendrils in vain, lisped chthonic obscenities from its psittacine beak, shook its riotous green mane, exuded venom from all its stingers, fangs and barbels, and madly clawed scales off its own teated belly. Darting gracefully in and out of the circle of its lashing mace-like tails, Dormender and Yodsess employed sword and axe to amputate and eventually decapitate the evil being. Upon final expiration the creature released a noxious cloud of puce bodily gas; but knowing the eventuality of this ultimate assault, the three practiced attackers had already retreated.

  Cleaning their weapons with swatches plucked from the broadcloth trees, the godlings regarded their fallen prey with mixed satisfaction and concern.

  “This marks the tenth starosta we have slain twixt the Diamond Lanes and Firewater Creek,” noted Dormender, “a region where once their vile kind were extinct. I thought we had battled long and hard in ages past to confine the feeble remnant of their race to the Sherbert Polar Floes.”