Fantasy & Science Fiction - JanFeb 2017

by Spilogale Inc.

  Just before he crashed he heard, then saw, a great wind. It whirled and whirled around itself, not funnel-shaped and black like a tornado, but a hurricane that had reduced itself to ten feet high, with its eye just two or three feet across. For an instant Jack thought he heard a voice inside all that noise, a child calling to him. He almost reached into the wind, but then it was gone.

  Jack fell hard on a damp and dirty city street, at nighttime. He grunted and got up, then looked around. West Street down in the Village, he realized, for there was the Hudson, just beyond the West Side Highway, and across the river, Hoboken. Only, it looked like the old days, before the city got around to cleaning it up and raising the rents. Stores were empty, or even boarded up, with not many lights on in the apartments above them. What the hell ? he thought. There's no one here .

  Then he looked a little farther down the street and saw, in fact, a whole group of people, neatly lined up and waiting to get inside some dimly lit club. A crude sign above the door declared it "The Iron Cage." Jack stared at the line and realized they were all men, and all dressed in black leather. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," he said out loud. "A leather bar?" Jack had been a kid when that scene was going on, but he remembered hearing about it. And he knew a Traveler who'd come from that world and liked to talk—in way too much detail—about the "good old days."

  He shook his head. Maybe Carol Acker was meant to be a transman heavy into bondage, and her parents, or just society, drove it out of her. Now how would that work when he brought it back? Talk about getting more than you bargained for.

  With a slight limp Jack made his way toward the bar. The men in the line glanced at him as he approached, then looked away. They all dressed the same, tight black leather pants, padded to make their cocks look bigger, muscle shirts to show off all that work at the gym, leather caps worn over short haircuts, and neat mustaches. Jack remembered they were called clones, all those men who'd been bullied in high school and were now trying for the same hyper-masculine look.

  Then he got closer and saw that they didn't just look the same, they were the same. Same height, same face, same body. Not clones but duplicates, used as extras to make the whole scene more real. He ignored them and went up to the bouncer. At least he looked different, which meant he wasn't just a prop. Dressed in leather pants and a leather vest with no shirt, he was bigger than the dupes, bulkier. No cap on his shaven head. A red bulb over the door made his scalp glow. Half a foot taller than Jack's six foot two, he crossed his arms as he looked Jack up and down, lingering on the tunic. "Sorry," he said, "we don't do drag here, girlfriend ."

  "My name is Jack Shade," Jack said, "and I need to go inside." Behind him, a couple of the clone dupers snorted, while another yelled "Get to the back of the line."

  The bouncer barked a laugh. "Do you think so?" he said. "Tell you what, Mary, get in line and maybe I'll decide to let you in when you reach the front. Don't bet on it, though."

  Jack considered a glamour to make the bouncer look the other way and forget he'd ever seen the oddly dressed customer. But then he reminded himself that the bouncer was not some non-Traveler whose Linear senses could be easily shifted. He stared hard at the tall figure, then closed his eyes. He opened them as narrowly as he possibly could, and for just a second saw the bouncer in his true form. Bright sunlight obliterated the gray street, the bar, the line of men. A giant cheetah stood on its hind legs in front of Jack. Or rather, an image of a cheetah, with exaggerated whiskers, huge round eyes, large spots that looked painted on in thick daubs, and claws that curved out from human-like hands. Jack whispered, "You're a long way from home, aren't you?"

  Jack blinked and the bouncer was back, but now he stared at Jack with a strange look, his mouth slightly open. Jack reached into one of his side pockets and pulled out a charm, a frog carved from an antelope bone. He held it out in his left hand. "Here," he said, "maybe this will help you when you get home. After all this is done." Sometimes, he thought, you bring something and you have no idea why until you need it. The bouncer took the charm in his huge hands and held it up before his eyes. His mouth opened and closed, and he said something Jack couldn't hear. Jack slid past him into the bar.

  Bare red bulbs hanging from the ceiling lit up a crowded room. A rough wooden bar ran across one wall, with men who looked just like the ones outside leaning against it and swigging beer from unlabeled bottles. Behind the bar, a shirtless bartender handed out more bottles, his face glistening with sweat. Some kind of heavy metal band blared from loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling. Jack found himself longing for Judy Garland. Or The Sound Of Music . A thick layer of sawdust covered the floor. If it was supposed to absorb any wetness or stains it wasn't doing a very good job. Jack could see blood, and brown spots, and could smell other things. When he got back, he thought, he was definitely charging extra.

  He looked around, first at the men by the bar or on the dance floor, then at the ones along the walls and in the corners, most of whom were doing various things to each other in improbable positions. Would he have to go examine each one of them for Carol's onyx ring? He imagined walking up to someone and asking, "Do you mind removing your fist for a moment?"

  No. He was being too literal. The scene jarred him, and it was meant to do that. Meant to make it hard for him to think. If these men were all dupes they couldn't all be Carol. He needed to find someone who was different. As he thought this, he noticed a slight change in the men. They didn't stop what they were doing, but shifted, as if to keep watch on him.

  Ignore them, he thought, and closed his eyes. He couldn't block the noise, or the smells, but underneath it all, faintly…he opened his eyes to focus on the wall farthest from the door, where a man was spread-eagled against a large wooden X, his wrists and ankles manacled to the ends. Two other men were lashing him with bullwhips that struck him almost horizontally, so that he was criss-crossed with lines, his T-shirt and jeans in shreds. His cries of mixed pain and pleasure sounded like others around the room, except that faintly, underneath them, Jack could hear the tears of a child. It was then that he realized. Whatever had happened to drive Carol Acker's soul piece from her body, her soul wasn't hiding. It was being held prisoner. He studied the man through slitted eyes. There it was, on the right hand. The onyx ring.

  And something else. If he turned his head to look at an angle, so that he could barely see the figure on the wall, the whip marks became lines that swirled and moved all on their own, like the winds that Jack had seen before he fell into the street. A cage, he thought. A cage of wind.

  As Jack began to move toward the man on the X, the clones tried to block him. Some made crude passes at him, grabbing or rubbing his crotch, others pretended to dance in front of him. He tried to push his way through to the prisoner but more and more of them crowded him. Finally, he took out his police whistle and blew a loud blast. The clones fell back, holding their ears. Now Jack held up one of his forged documents. Covered with a script unknown to language scholars was a painting of a beautiful young man flying naked above a mountain range. "My name is John Shade," Jack called out, "and I come under the banner and protection of Cthermes, Lord of Travelers!"

  Whatever their true nature, the men in the bar were real enough to what they were supposed to be that they let him pass. Some stared at the picture, with hunger or a deep sadness. Jack moved quickly, but didn't run, to the wall.

  The men with the whips were bulkier than the dupes, more like the bartender, and Jack wondered for a moment if they too were exiled cheetahs. It didn't matter, he had no more antelope charms, and besides they'd already turned to face him and raised their whips. Jack reached down toward his right leg, and his knife jumped into his hand. With two quick slashes he cut off the thongs. To his surprise, what he'd assumed were just leather sinews writhed along the floor, and the guards doubled over in pain, their whip hands held tight against their bellies. Tentacles, Jack realized, but he didn't care. The man on the wall raised his head to look at Jack with hope. "Ple
ase," he whispered, "you don't know how long they've held me." What had been whip marks now moved in swirls around the body. Within them, the onyx ring flared as Jack stepped forward.

  Still on his knees, one of the guards said, "Shade, stop!" and the other added, "You don't know what you're doing."

  Jack ignored them as he moved toward the figure on the wall. The whips were gone, but he still needed a way to break through the swirling lines. As he looked, the man became a girl in a torn red dress, her body covered in angry slashes and what looked like dirt and pieces of stone. "Hurry," she begged. He held up the knife. Would it cut through the lines?

  As Jack was about to try, one of the guards gestured with his good hand. Jack braced himself for an attack, but to his surprise the swirls and lines vanished. Amazed, he rushed forward to free the prisoner, only to realize that she was gone, too. For a second, he saw a crude painting on a stone wall—some creature, or spirit, with whirling lines all around it. Then that too vanished, and Jack found himself falling.…

  * * *

  HE CRASHED HARD, on his side, on what turned out to be a highly polished stone floor, lit by flickers of fire. He looked up and saw a layered chandelier with as much as a hundred candles. Sconces along the equally polished walls held five more candles each.

  Strangely, Jack heard the music and saw the musicians before he noticed the dancers all around him. At the end of the room, on a low pedestal, eight men in blue velvet waistcoats and breeches, with white wigs on their heads, were playing some ornate but repetitive dance music on what today would be called "early instruments." Jack recognized the odd tinny sound from concerts he'd gone to with his wife.

  Finally, he saw the dancers, and just in time, for a line of them was coming toward him as if they'd trample him and not even notice. He rolled out of the way at the last moment. The men wore black waistcoats and breeches, with white stockings and patent leather shoes with gold buckles and one-inch heels. Their wigs were shorter than the musicians', but looked more finely woven. The women also wore wigs, high elaborate concoctions apparently inspired by the chandelier. Their gowns, pale blue with small pearls and jewels sewn into them, had long sleeves, a bodice that flattened the breasts, and wide flounced skirts. Their faces were powdered white, their lips dark red.

  Safely by the wall now, Jack studied the dancers. As he'd guessed, there was only one couple, duplicated to fill the floor, which meant he could rule them out. The orchestra, too, were all the same. But when he looked at the wall opposite the musicians, he saw something different. A young woman in a pale green dress that was more flowing than the dancers' gowns was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair with her white-gloved hands folded in her lap. On either side of her stood a wide middle-aged woman in a long black dress buttoned up to the neck. With their arms crossed over their full bosoms, and scowls on their faces, they looked more like harem guards than chaperones. Each had a long beaded purse on her arm, and Jack imagined them drawing out scimitars if he got too close.

  He stared at the girl's right hand. It was hard to see through the gloves, but Jack thought he saw the rough shape of the onyx ring.

  Jack started to make his way toward the young woman. With each step, however, the dancers, seemingly oblivious to his presence, managed to step in front of him. He tried to slide through them, but more appeared in his way. Shoving them aside brought the same result. Jack wondered if they multiplied, like amoebae. When he glanced back at the orchestra he saw that their faces, impassive and calm, were all turned toward him. Now more and more dancers moved around him, in tighter and tighter rings. Soon they would trample him.

  He took out his bone flute and began to play a simple five-note tune, over and over. The musicians scowled. The dancers hesitated, even stumbled. As he continued to play the tune, Jack began to beat out a counter-rhythm against his thigh with his free hand, as complex as the tune was simple, but in a completely different pattern. What he'd said to Carol was true, that he had no natural rhythm—he suspected nobody did—but he'd once spent a year studying with a master drummer in Burkina-Faso.

  The effect was immediate. The dancers fell to their knees and pressed their palms against their ears. The musicians played louder, but off-key, the violins and violas sounding like cats in an alley fight. Jack moved in and out of the stricken dancers as he made his way to the girl and her chaperone guards. When he got closer, however, something changed. The music became smoother and harmonious once more, though not the same melody. Jack glanced back at the orchestra. They still looked in pain as they compulsively tortured their instruments. The music here must be coming from the air or the walls, Jack thought. It swirled around and around itself, and as Jack stared at the young woman, the music became visible, that same cage of spiraling wind that had trapped the man in the leather bar. Jack wondered how the hell he could cut through music.

  He moved forward, and as he did so, the two women stepped toward him. Jack braced himself. They opened their purses, but instead of swords they took out large hand mirrors, one backed with gold, the other with silver. When they lifted them light poured out from the glass like a great wave. Jack's black clothes, and the charcoal on his skin, would protect his body, but he had only a few seconds to save his eyes. And more, for he knew that "baby starshine," as Travelers called the light, would go straight for his brain. He could already feel the fire through his closed eyes as he fumbled in his pockets for the polished coins from the Shadow Roman Empire. He pressed them tight against his eyelids. The chaperones cried out, and a moment later Jack heard the thud of the mirrors hitting the floor.

  He removed the coins and opened his eyes just enough to check that they weren't faking it. Their eyes looked completely blacked out, almost gouged from their heads. In a high quavery voice one of them said, "Shade, no. You don't know what you're doing."

  Fuck , Jack thought. I'm getting sick of hearing that from people who've just tried to kill me . He looked past them to the girl. She seemed unable to get up from her seat, but her eyes were wet and her voice tight as she said, "Please. You don't know what they do to me. Every night when the music stops.…" Her voice trailed off into sobs.

  Jack made himself look not at the girl but at the energy that swirled around her. In the leather bar it had been whiplashes. Now it was sound. Circular melodies and harmonies impossible to decode moved all around her to form a spiral prison. Jack took out his bone flute again. It was such a simple instrument, just five notes, but maybe if he found the right pattern.… He began to play, tentatively at first, but then he let his instrument lead him. Like a skeleton key, it weaved through the harmonies, finding places to unlock, the way a master thief can open a set of tumblers, one by one.

  The lines began to drop away. "Hurry!" the girl called to him. "You don't know how long I've been here, what they do to me." He thought of his daughter, trapped in the Forest of Souls. For him, years had passed, but for her it could be decades, maybe longer.…

  Any moment, Jack thought. Just a little more open passage. Now. He braced himself and leaped for her, but even as he moved, one of the women called out some words in a language that almost cracked Jack's head open. And then, just as with the man on the X, the girl turned into a rough painting on a stone wall. Jack crashed into it—and through it—

  * * *

  —and fell onto a wooden floor, in a dark room that smelled of old sweat, older books, and whiskey. He saw a plain wooden table with ten old chairs around it. There were ten shot glasses on the table, along with a bottle of Schnapps, and a plate of small cakes that looked much older than the liquor.

  Jack heard a murmur of voices in some language he couldn't quite catch. When he glanced around he saw a half-open door, with light and what he realized now was chanting on the other side. He walked through into what looked like a small makeshift synagogue, with a few benches, a plain wooden ark on the far wall, and ten old men who swayed and sang in Hebrew. They had come in suits but had taken off their jackets and rolled up the right sleeves of thei
r white shirts so they could wrap the leather cords of tefillin around their arms. The small leather box attached to the cords gleamed slightly on their biceps, as did the matching box on their foreheads. There were ten of them, the number for a minyan that would allow a service to take place. And of course they were all the same person. Jack wondered if that counted for a prayer session.

  The thing was, there was no one else. None of the dupes could be Carol, so where was someone different, with an onyx ring and trapped behind swirls of energy? Swirls. He looked again at the tefillin straps and realized they wrapped around the men's fingers and up their arms in a spiral. Was Carol's soul trapped in one of those little boxes? In all of them? Would he have to rip them off each man's arm, take them apart, and put all the pieces together, a jigsaw soul? Or search for the ring, like a prize in an old crackerjack box?

  Then he looked again at the front of the room and realized there was a larger box. The ark. Usually an ark held one or more Torah scrolls, which made them big enough to hold a child, or even a small woman. He stared at the wooden structure. Unlike the ones he'd seen in richer congregations, it was unadorned beyond a peaked cornice at the top. No carvings, no velvet curtain, just two doors that opened from the center. As he continued to examine it Jack thought he could see faint lines, swirls like the leather on the men's arms, but thinner. And alive. They moved all by themselves, round and round the ark, like chains.

  He took a breath of the stale, sweaty air and stepped forward. Without a break in their prayers, or even a turn of the head, the congregants moved to block him. He shifted in a different direction and they followed. This is getting seriously old , Jack thought, and tried to shove them aside. Instantly the tefillin straps sprang off their bodies and wound around Jack's arms and legs so he couldn't move. They held him so tightly he couldn't even strain or push against them. If he could reach his knife—useless. Same with his charms and tricks and whistles.