Fantasy & Science Fiction - JanFeb 2017

by Spilogale Inc.

  Because Alexander loved the place. He would have wanted to be buried there. Ptolemy loved Alexander, so he commissioned a monument to him, to show his love.

  Keiji sat back in his chair, looking out toward the window. I wonder, he said.

  You wonder what?

  What a lighthouse is for.

  It shows you where the danger is. It's to warn away oncoming ships so they don't wreck themselves on the rocks.

  But it is also there to light the way, to guide you in. To show you the way to safety.

  Hmm. Beth considered. I guess it depends on the sailor.

  Keiji drew a line, from his heart, forward into empty space. Yes—the meaning of the signal depends on the receiver. Should I go away, or come closer? Will I dash myself on the rocks, or find safe harbor?

  Beth let his words sink in.

  Finally she dipped into a sagging pocket of her dressing gown and drew out a sheet of paper. Got this one memorized, she said.

  Keiji stood and, from an upper shelf, pulled down a bronze urn. The bowl of it was blackened. They pushed the poem down into it. Beth reached across the desk and picked up a blue lacquered lighter that they used only for this purpose. She lit the paper, then watched as it became like a live thing, curling in the oncoming surf of the fire.

  Keiji, she said.

  He looked up at her. Her bright-eyed husband.

  Bethany, he said, inviting her to speak.

  If you ever die, before me, she said, looking down into the bronze bowl. She couldn't finish.

  You're a strong one, said Keiji. Strong as earth.

  He reached out and gripped her arm, humming, squeezing in one place and then another, as if to transfer strength to her.

  Strong as water. My wife.

  Strong as water, my wife—

  Beth came back to the present.

  That was the first line of the last poem he had ever written for her, which lay curled and unburned in the bronze urn. She did not want to burn it, even though she knew Keiji would have wanted her to if he were alive.

  But he was dead.

  Tumbled blocks of stone upon the

  bed, under tides the river-

  bed, mother river cover

  over, close the lids of learn'ed

  dead, done and lost to all

  above.

  —Ayesha Rawlings, "Midwest"

  ( Tesseract: A Journal of New Poetry , v. 78:5, 2415)

  The first snowstorm of the year was settling in.

  Beth stopped at the foot of the ramp and tipped her head back, looking up to the top of the lighthouse, straining her eyes, but she couldn't see the statue of Poseidon. Only the faint butter glow of her own room.

  She ascended the ramp, carrying bagfuls of supplies. The wind picked up and rose to a scream, pushing her body to the edge, but she struggled forward. Once she was through the doorway, everything became quiet, as if she'd flipped a switch. She turned around to look behind her. The snow was blowing sideways, and in the distance, the house lay silent, its windows now dark, taped, and ready for demolition. It was not hers anymore.

  She got a better grip on her bags and walked forward.

  White candles burned inside hurricane lamps, set in alcoves in the wall, lighting the way ahead. Her footsteps were loud in the vaulted space. Every echo took a beat to return. As she passed each candle, she bent and blew it out. Darkness followed her.

  Her apartment was in the top tier of the tower. From outside, the tier appeared circular; but the room inside was shaped like an octagon and faced with rose-colored granite, with round windows at every point of the compass. There was a narrow bed with a single pillow, and a stack of woolen blankets at its foot. A composting toilet, just off the stairwell. A gas range with a cast-iron pan on the burner. Cupboards full of food. An oak desk, and surrounding it, her globes, maps, and books. Next to it were half-built bookshelves, with lumber and tools nearby.

  The place was good. Her new home. Her last home.

  Beth set down her bags and unpacked. The last thing she drew out was a brown parcel that she'd picked up from the engraver's shop, by special order. She sat down at her desk, cut away the strings, sliced open the edges, opened the flaps, and drew close her wastebasket to hold all the shipping fluff. Once she'd cleared enough away, the tools emerged one by one.

  Hammer.

  Chisels.

  Mallet.

  Scrapers.

  Knife.

  Rasp.

  Brushes.

  Pencils.

  She laid them out on her desk as if setting the table for a Thanksgiving meal, and then, folding her hands as if saying grace, she closed her eyes and recited every poem she had memorized in fifty years of marriage.

  When she opened her eyes again, the snow was falling even harder outside her windows, blowing first one way then the other in erratic pulses. But Beth was warm and dry. She put on some water for instant coffee, sat down again, and eyed the narrow iron stairway across the room, which led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The great hearth—the light of the Lighthouse—was in the room above.

  Tomorrow her work on the walls would begin. But tonight she would set the fire above, and keep her first watch—for what would go away to sea, and what would come in to harbor.

  The first of the ruins was lifted at 7:44 A.M., from a depth of twenty feet. Up it came, a monstrous, rosy slab of granite, like a goddess inert, patient with our grappling ropes. But when we laid it down on the deck, one of the sailors cried out and pointed, and a crowd came running to see. There were words in the stone.

  T. Y. Falion, The Recovery (2702)

  * * *

  Wetherfell's Reef Runics

  By Marc Laidlaw | 7800 words

  Since retiring from the game industry about a year ago, Marc Laidlaw has been spending a lot of his time on the island of Kauai. One of his projects has been reissuing his catalog of novels as ebooks. He's also collected almost all his short fiction, which has been recently published under the title 400 Boys and 50 More.

  When he noticed that there aren't many bookstores on Kauai, he decided to create the fictional Castaway Books and the Hawaiian island of Tauai around it. We love bookstores, especially when they contain rare and possibly dangerous volumes. After reading this story, we immediately hoped to visit Castaway again. We think you will too.

  THE VISITOR DROWNED AT Hollows Reef while Ambrose Sabala, mid-snorkel, was making a gleeful mental inventory of the morning's haul—not of fish, but of books. Ambrose drifted over the dull, trampled coral beds with ears full of seawater, snorkel mouthpiece firmly clenched in his teeth, three-pronged pole spear dangling, and did not hear the sirens wailing louder and softer and louder again as emergency vehicles raced along the folds of the ocean highway. He had raided the Friends of the Library bin outside the Schefferville Library that morning, and with one ten-dollar bill taken away a stack of first editions in good and even mint condition. A Bret Easton Ellis, stowed in someone's luggage, then unpacked and left behind—no doubt to make room for a resin tiki or a seashell mug. A biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, also unread. An untouched copy of The Marriage Plot , or anyway one that had been touched only in order that it might be used to flatten a dozen photographs of a bat mitzvah and family surfing lessons. Ambrose pulled his spear back taut on its rubber sling and released it halfheartedly in the direction of a triggerfish, which failed to react except to swerve away slowly from the empty triple threat of his barbed prongs.

  Meanwhile, a quarter-mile east along the beach, the fire engine was just pulling into the crowded Hollows parking lot. Lifeguards floated above the drowned man, taking turns diving down, trying to figure out how he had tied or tangled himself in the cracks of the massive, sunken stone slabs that lay partly buried in sand a hundred yards offshore. Just up the beach, a scuba instructor in charge of the morning's first batch of tourist divers from the majestic Schefferville Cliffs Resort Hotel told his group to continue struggling out of their wet suits and enjoy the compli
mentary bottled water while he went to see if the lifeguards needed a scuba diver's assistance.

  Ambrose's booklust was so all-consuming that after convincing himself he should probably head back to town to open the shop, he managed to cross the sand, unchain his scooter from the fence half-hidden in lilikoi vines, and putter away from Hollows without ever having the slightest idea that a man had drowned a short distance away, possibly while he was paddling around gloating about his finds.

  Later that morning, he started hearing rumors from people coming into the shop but still didn't think anything in particular about it. Not until Anisi came in and told him the whole story, dropping off his midmorning iced coconut mocha, did he realize that he must have been there all the time it was unfolding.

  "So Lucas goes down—"

  "Lucas?"

  "Borrezo, he's working at Tauai Dive Adventures now, yeah?"

  "Okay."

  "He goes down and finds the guy has chained himself there with a bicycle lock."

  "The fuck?"

  "I know. The fire truck has a bolt cutter on it but try using one of those underwater. With a dead guy staring at you."

  "They made Lucas cut the lock?"

  "No, but dude's gonna have nightmares about that one for sure."

  "So who did cut him free?"

  She shrugged. Skinny, heavily tattooed, all kinds of iridescent colors against her brown skin. They had lived together once for a little while, when Brose was back and forth between the Mainland; heading to L.A. had made it relatively easy to break up without totaling their friendship. She worked at Java & Kava, just across the street. The coffee counter where she pulled shots was like the central switchboard for the Coconut Hotline.

  "Dive rescue was on the scene by then, I guess. But still, chills. I haven't seen Lucas yet. Usually he's in by now for his chai banana latte."

  Brose slurped a fat strawful of his drink. "How's the Kava book cart doing?"

  "Whyn't you come see for yourself? I never check it. I have a Bindle now. It's waterproof."

  "Never thought you'd let yourself get chained to the digital tether," he said.

  "What tether? It's wireless. Look at all these fat fucking books you have to haul around. What if you ever had to move shop? What you gonna do in the next tsunami?"

  "Build a raft out of 'em," he said. "Anyway, I'll take you up on that bin-check. It's slow." As he opened the door to let her out, he gestured back at the shady interior, the teetering piles and shelves crammed with books. "Now these are wireless."

  She snickered. "Come on, my break is pau . I gotta get back."

  He picked up an armload of trashed books, including a waterlogged copy of The Alienist and one nameless book, ruined by someone slapping a Tauai Local bumper sticker around it to hold the decaying jacket together, so that all you could see of the original cover was the name Dan Brown. He locked the knob from the inside and pulled the door shut as he followed Anisi into the street. A rental car almost didn't stop—the driver had a guidebook open on the steering wheel and was consulting a cell phone in addition—but somehow they Froggered two lanes without mishap. Anisi sashayed up the steps and into the musically pulsing interior of the J&K, where the hiss of espresso machines and the roar of grinders fought to drown out the beat of reggaeton and local hits from the island's only station, KTAU ("Indy Island Radio, Bradda!").

  Ambrose hung back and idled on the porch, glancing at handbills pinned up around the door

  Twin Trees Keiki Surf Contest!

  Grommets 12 and under! Scouts welcome!

  Slack-key guitar! Ukulele concerts!

  Custom lessons from a former roadie for Suns & Daughters!

  Also hauling and painting!

  Roommates wanted! Share our pono treehouse!

  We are a chef, a musician, an artist, and

  a beginning yoga instructor. No drugs or dogs! Mahalo!

  Someone had pushed the book cart to the deck's far corner. Paper signs were duct-taped to either end: Take One, Leave One! and Take One and Leave a Few $$$! The stock had been slightly depleted since yesterday and there was a buck in the can. Money was money, but sometimes a prize volume turned up in trade for something shitty. Weird books came to Castaway by all different avenues, he was starting to learn. Uncle Byron had warned him the carts weren't usually profitable, but it was still wise to diversify. He inventoried the one at J&K every few days like a trapper checking lines, ever hopeful. He slotted the armload of freebies onto the top shelf and skimmed the assorted titles to see if anything worth snagging for the store had turned up. Nothing. Trail guides always sold quickly, but the only new one on the cart looked like it had been through a flashflood rescue situation, dumped here to lighten the load before its rattled owners had hightailed back to an actual continent rather than the weathered slopes of a not-terribly-old volcano. Perhaps the Dan Brown and Caleb Carr would be tempting changeling-bait for the book menehune , those magical fairies with the ability to turn bestseller dross into rare-book gold.

  "Hey, Ambrose, you still buying books?"

  Turning, he saw Kailani Nakoa sipping milky coffee at the deck rail. She was one of his mom's old friends; he had known her for years. Graying, a little plump, still worked too hard considering how little she ever had to show for it. Sad eyes.

  " Aloha , Auntie! Yeah, somehow Castaway Books is surviving for now, even without Byron around. I'm always looking for new books—new to me, I mean. Used is fine."

  "I was about to come see you. I got some boxes I filled up cleaning."

  "Vacation rentals, ah? Sweet. Visitors ditching books, that's my prime source of supply. Happy to take a look."

  "A lot of places I clean, if the owners spend time there, they want the books to stay. But the management companies, they tell me throw 'em out. Don't like to waste 'em, though, yeah?"

  "If I can use 'em, it's a few extra bucks for you, Auntie. Bring 'em by the shop anytime."

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek, but he glimpsed something troubled in her eyes as she slipped away. Worries ran deep in her life. Rain falling on the ocean, she'd said once, and he'd never forgotten, even though he couldn't remember why she'd said it. An old woman's tears are like rain falling on the ocean. They were probably talking about Cutty, one of the times he'd been in jail. One of the many times. When he was out, burglaries crept up, tourist luggage was liberated from cars, all the usual houses were broken into…until he went away again and crime declined. In some ways, Auntie Kailani seemed more relieved when he was in county, because then at least it couldn't get any worse. He'd had some OD scares; he'd been in rehab; he'd left the island and come back in what amounted to a crash landing. Brose and Cutty had been friends as kids. It was gut-wrenching to watch him willfully throw himself over the edge. Brose's own mother still asked about him, though he couldn't bear to tell her what had happened to the funny, mischievous little kid she'd known. The island was an increasingly distant dream to his mom, and with time it appeared to be turning into a fantasy of itself—like the dreams of paradise the first-time visitors kept bringing over with them, stoked by the tourist bureau, the airlines, and the hotel industry.

  As Ambrose footed aside a chicken that was pecking at a piece of mahi-mahi fallen from a taco, he thought again about the man who had drowned at Hollows while he was snorkeling that morning. What kind of delusions must that guy have been harboring to chain himself in fifteen feet of water, with no chance of changing his mind once he'd closed the lock? Was it supposed to be some kind of Houdini escape stunt? Suicide? The whole thing was bizarre.

  Ambrose fit his key into the front door of Castaway Books and stepped inside, making a beeline for the biography section. A stray curiosity, but as usual it claimed him. He fell deep into a life of Houdini and didn't surface, except for the usual bookselling transactions, until someone rapped on the rear door.

  The door opened onto the shopping village parking lot. He kept it closed because the fish trucks threw guts in the Dumpsters and it could get r
ank. He opened it now to see that Auntie Kailani had reversed her old car up to the door with the hatchback raised. A couple cardboard boxes full of books sat among the cleaning supplies.

  Ambrose carried them in and set them on the counter, seeing an average assortment of paperbacks, at first glance nothing of note. He was wondering how much he could afford to offer, just to help her out, when she let him off the hook.

  "I have to run, Ambrose. Got my grandson to pick up. Maybe you can take a look and call me later. Tell me if you want any of them."

  "Okay, Auntie," he said, relieved not to have to disappoint her right away. "Looks decent. I'll call you in a little bit, yeah?"

  When she was gone, he started unpacking and making stacks. It was as dreary a collection as he had feared. Some were the sort of books that sold by the pound for use in furniture store displays. Reader's Digest abridged novels, old textbooks. Maybe some local realtor could use them for staging an open house, but it wouldn't be worth his while to waste shelf space on them. Even taking them off her hands, he'd be incurring the cost of driving them to the recycling center. At this point they weren't books so much as "mixed paper."

  There were a few old mystery paperbacks, lightly furred or spotted with mold, their once-golden edges faded to the color of a water stain. Also, there were water stains. They looked like rejects from a hoarder's estate sale. Auntie needed to clean a better class of house. He slammed a few Barbara Cartland romance novels down with a sigh, then dug to the bottom of the second box.

  From under a pulped copy of Fate Magazine , 1968, he pulled a softbound volume the size and shape of a notebook, covered in a dark green material that felt like textured leather. His first impression was that it was wet, slippery, but he laid it on the counter and studied it until he proved to himself that it was dry as powder, soft and smooth. The patterned texture resembled scales, rounded and overlapping. Snakeskin? It looked expensive, the sort of material you'd reserve for a wallet or designer purse. With growing bibliophilic excitement, he gently opened the cover to a title page of parchment-colored paper.