Shadows & Reflections: A Roger Zelazny Tribute Anthology

by Roger Zelazny

  They circled the healing spring, once, twice, thrice.

  And then Robin made a feint to one side, and then whirled his body so that he came round-about the other side, and with a soft thump, a testing blow, caught Jed in the ribs.

  The move was right deft, Jed thought. But now he countered with one of his own. Lowering his staff, he quickly hopped over it, raised it up from behind so that he held it backwards behind his head, then he let go his left hand and with his right propelled the bamboo in a wide quarter-staff move that struck Robin square on the top of the head.

  “Nicely done,” the other said, “Well-turned. I deserved that crease.”

  It was then Jed knew the white-toothed smile, the narrow mustache, the broad shouldered heft of the man before him. It was Erroll Flynn.

  But it didn’t matter who he was any more than who Jed was in this instance. They were now in the business of warding blows. A crack on the crown here, a bump and a bash there, a tumble and roll and spin. Once Jed tripped into the spring and saw the mother of that water, a mermaid. She was lovelier than life though with the teeth of a fish as well as the breasts of a woman, and she wished to do her business upon him. He popped out of the spring and sought his staff. Flynn had it and tossed it to him in a friendly way.

  Their heads hummed as the cudgels stroked the hours, and hours. They tired, breathed heavily. Yet they kept on, and on. Until, in the end, Flynn said—“Breathes there a man twixt here and Canterbury Town who could do the like to me that thou hast done!”

  They were both on all fours when he said it. And so Erroll Flynn stood up, hands on hips and grinned at the sun.

  And a voice broke the silence—“Cut!”

  *

  Jed woke with a shudder. Raggy was there.

  “Bring your wetsuit and follow me now,” he said as he turned to go down the stairs.

  Jed peeked into his bedroom and saw the solitary, priceless bag on the bureau.

  Down on the rocky beach, the wind was from the west. Jed wormed his way into his one-ply neoprene wetsuit. Raggy had only a ragged pair of cutoffs equal to his name. They swam in the heavy surf out toward the reef, battered by swells and pasted with seaweed torn loose from the sandy bottom.

  Nearing the reef, Raggy pointed to the rock cliff just below the Blue Harbor garage. The building was in such bad repair, the back end of it, from this angle, seemed ready to slide off the cliff.

  “We haffa get to the cliff,” Raggy shouted over the boom of the waves. Then, jerking his snorkel away from his mouth and off to the side of his head, he added, “That’s the easy part.”

  “What’s the hard part?” Jed asked.

  “The cliff.”

  They treaded water for a little more, then Raggy headed for the limestone drop-off.

  Raggy led the way between the greenish coral heads. He was quick as a fish. But when they reached the base of the cliff, Jed saw that it was a sheer fifty feet of vertical rock. Seagrape sprang from every crack and made the climb look impossible.

  “We climb up,” Raggy said matter-of-factly. “Use the withe dem fe hold on. Pull yuhself up. No problem.”

  The withes were vines, a tapestry of them, woven in and around the seagrapes.

  He told Jed to go first. “You fall, me a go catch.” Raggy laughed at his own joke.

  Jed hooked his mask and snorkel to the light weight belt he wore. The belt equalized the buoyancy of the suit, but now it was extra weight he didn’t need.

  Hand over hand, Jed crept up, a little at a time. There were ledges for footholds and the roots of the seagrape and the withes for grasping. A small amount of slippage slowed them down. Small rocks tumbled off the cliff-face as they ascended. A white bird shot away from a fissure that widened into a big crack as they neared the top of the cliff. It’s this very crack that’s sucking the garage into oblivion.

  When they almost were up to the crumbled foundation of the building, Raggy said—“Dere, look dere, mon!”

  Jed had the sun in his eyes. Even shading them with one hand, he couldn’t see very well. “What am I looking for?”

  Raggy, right beside him, elbow to elbow, held a withe and used his chin to indicate a place to the left of Jed’s shoulder.

  Jed squinted. The crack in the rock where Raggy nodded was a small cave.

  Jed saw it then. It was coated in milk-white guano. Maybe that was what had preserved it. Anyway, it was chalky; and unmistakable. Caught in a cleft, covered in leaf trash and sea grape sticks.

  In the cave shadow, it stood out. The halved torso, slim-hipped and angular. The calves muscular, feet very large, splay-toed.

  The eye-catcher was of course the erect member. The half torso of a man-boy—sitting absurdly in a helter-skelter of seabird scatter, the whole thing as bright and well-preserved as could be. In fact, better than the day it was done forty years before. Nature had a hand in this. Nature had completed it.

  “Want-y?” Raggy asked.

  Jed nodded with a crooked smile.

  Then, “Get-y,” Raggy said.

  For a moment, Jed felt himself suspended between his imagination and the cliff. Lightly hovering in the air, he breathed. But did little else. For, in his elation at seeing the sculpture, he’d glanced downward. The sharp rocks below beckoned. One look and all sense of gravity was gone. He gripped the vine. Held on for dear life.

  I know as surely as I am not attached to anything, that I am also stoned on blueberry. That my brain is not where I am. That my mind is somewhere else, holding me up, but I don’t know how. . . I am on the verge, hanging. Caught between life and death.

  He pressed his cheek to the rock and imagined himself hidden from death. At the same time he saw the barracuda coming at him like a torpedo. Its upper jaw was at right angles to the lower which gave the animal a certain cruelty. No doubt, any second, it was going to strike. The sun glaring in the water-glimmer blinded him. But still, somehow, he knew he was Bond. And for that reason, he couldn’t, wouldn’t allow himself to die. The barracuda struck. There was a wild tearing of neoprene, and flesh. A cloud of blood obscured his sight. But now he reacted to the searing pain in his shoulder. Raising his spear gun he triggered it. The rubber thongs whammed home; so did the spear. It struck the crazed fish full in the face, dislocating its upper and lower jaws. Unable to do anything else, the barracuda tore off madly in an erratic retreat which instantly brought other silvery meat eaters, more cudas, down upon it. The blood spectacle continued. Bond would live and let die another day. He released the vine when the command, “Cut!” thundered in his water-logged ear.

  Raggy was laughing—“Wanty wanty, no gety. Gety gety, no wanty.”

  You want it until you get it, then you don’t want it.

  Jed blinked in the scorching sunlight. He’d let go of the withe and was holding on to bare rock. How he was holding on was another thing.

  His head rocked. His pulse throbbed.

  Marcia said tonelessly, “Get the goddamn thing, you idiot!”

  Then he sort of slid sideways.

  Raggy had mercifully tied a withe around his waist. His body was supported by it. And he was half-in, half-out of the cave. He was so near the sculpture, he could smell it.

  I can smell it. It smells like bird shit. My mind is back. I’m clear again. The blueberry taste is still in my mouth, but the rest of me is sound.

  “How’d it get here, Raggy?” he heard himself say.

  Raggy, always laughing, laughed again. “Miss May—her trow dat ugly sintin down de cliff.”

  “Who’s Miss May?”

  “Mr. Leonard wife.”

  “Who’s Mr. Leonard?”

  It was an odd conversation to have on cliffside after blacking, or whatever, out.

  “Dem people dem was housekeeper and cook and driver fe Mr. Coward back in de old time dem. She—Miss May—still live up inna Grant’s Town. Her didn’t approve of David nekkid. Nor him big hood made a clay.”

  “Hood?”

  “Yuh call dat a cock
, me tink.”

  I worked my hand into the sticks. Much of the nest collapsed into the fissure, but Jed grabbed the best handhold there was. Then, knowing he had it securely, he began the final climb. Shoulder and elbow, foot and toe. Vine in his right hand. David’s cock in the other.

  The fissure had what amounted to a stairway of stone—little ledges all the way to the top. Soon they were safely there.

  For a long time, Raggy and Jed just sat on the promontory, staring at the glittering sea. David’s better half sat next to them.

  How much history does the world need? It devours all. Eats and shits it out into the void. What’s left after years and years? Some irrelevant detail, some little ledge-caught pecker of a promise from the past. Some bit of gooey memory someone can’t get rid of.

  Jed looked at it, disgusted with himself. Filled with loathing for his quest, his passion to find what did not want to be found. Without another thought, he kicked it over the edge of the cliff. This time it went all the way down. When it hit a coral head at the bottom, it turned into red and white smoke. One puff on the wind, and gone.

  “Yah, mon,” Raggy said. That was all he said. But he patted Jed on the shoulder.

  *

  Jed was in his favorite position—prone in the four-poster—when Marcia called that evening.

  “You want the good news or the bad news?”

  “There’s both?”

  “Okay, the bad: Mr. Handsel doesn’t want the bottom half of the sculpture after all. I hope you haven’t gone to too much trouble trying to find it—”

  “Naah. And the good. . .”

  “—news is. . . Karin at Doubleday wants the book.”

  “The book?”

  “The one you’re going to write about searching all over hell and gone for that priceless piece of art. She read me parts of your outline over the phone. The parts that sold her.”

  “But I didn’t send her an outline!”

  “The next thing you’re going to tell me is you didn’t write one. Well, there’s a six-figure advance in the offing.”

  “Six? Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I am that I wrote the outline for you.”

  “You—what?”

  “I did.”

  Jed couldn’t tell what he liked best—that she had or that he hadn’t. It didn’t really matter one way or another. He hated outlines, and couldn’t write them. Marcia had written some of his best. . . but that was years ago.

  Marcia continued to talk while Jed, still musing over the way things had turned out, gazed down the beach towards Castle Garden. Six figures would buy a lot of chinkweed.

  A lone figure was walking between the rocks.

  A tall shapely woman.

  It was Clover, the new housekeeper.

  “See you tomorrow then. I’ll call you with the flight number,” Marcia said. “Jed—are you still there?”

  “What?—you’re coming down here—now?”

  “Tomorrow. We have to work out the terms for this thing, you know. By the way, get some sleep, will you? You sound like you’ve been up for 40 nights.”

  “Well, you only live twice.”

  Marcia laughed, once, said goodbye.

  Jed thought, What a good girl Marcia is. How infinitely loyal and intricately clever.

  He thought about this as Clover came up the garden path.

  The Night Heirs

  by Warren Lapine

  The full moon rose up over the city, gloriously shining through and reflecting on the mists rising from the pavement, the only remnants of a late afternoon storm. The moon seemed enormous in that illusionary way that it can just upon rising. I would have liked to be able to enjoy the beauty of that magnificent orb, but I knew the portents. My life was about to change and I didn’t want it to.

  Business was good, entirely too good. I moved away from the cash register to help a slim, young woman who was fingering a wooden stake.

  “Can I help you?

  She looked up, a thoughtful, far away look in her eyes. “I’m not sure. I really don’t know much about this, but I think I need one of these.”

  “Well, if you need one of those I’d also recommend that you purchase a mallet and some garlic.”

  “Yes,” she said, her mind seemingly a million miles away, “I think I heard or read something about garlic.”

  “Do they sparkle?” I asked her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The person you plan to use this stake on, does he or she sparkle?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes I suppose he does sparkle a little bit if you look at him in just the right light.”

  “Then you’ll also want a copy of The Book of Mormon.”

  “The Book of Mormon?”

  I nodded, “I’m not sure why, but it seems to work better than the Bible does on the ones that sparkle.”

  I got her supplies together and she handed me her credit card. A moment later she walked off into the night, reflected moonlight glinting silver in her long, straight hair.

  Since the store was now empty I returned to my office to watch a rerun of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos. But I’d only just settled into my chair when I heard the bell on the front door chime. I walked back out into the storefront to find three very stout, very short men walking down one of the store’s many aisles muttering angrily to one another.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” All three started as if no one in a store had ever asked them if they could help them before.

  “Who are you?” the largest of the three demanded.

  “Vic,” I said helpfully, “I own the store.”

  They grumbled a bit more, I thought I might have heard the words “too tall” and “pretty boy” among others. Then the biggest and clearly the leader pointed up at the wall behind me. “How much for that?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. High up on the wall in a glass case was a sword gleaming much brighter than it had any right to considering how little light was actually falling upon it. I turned back to my grumpy customers. “I’m afraid that’s for display only.”

  “Name your price,” Grumpy growled.

  “It’s not for sale. Is there something else I could help you gentlemen with?”

  A bit more grumbling and then the leader said, “We need provisions for a. . . um. . . we need to outfit for a. . .”

  I decided to cut to chase and save us both some time. “Are there thirteen of you or are there seven of you?”

  “That’s none of your damn business,” Grumpy spat at me.

  “Fine, suit yourself, you’ll excuse me if I don’t show you the way out.”

  Grumpy flew into a rage. “How dare you speak to me like that. Do you know who I am? I am Thor—”

  “Look, Thor,” I said interrupting what I am certain would have been a marvelous monologue. “It’s up to you, I don’t care if you want my help or not. If there are seven of you then I’d recommend the Whistle While You Work package of mining tools. If there are thirteen of you then I’d recommend the Misty Mountain package that includes weapons and some dragon repellant.”

  His anger evaporated. “You have dragon repellant?”

  “Guaranteed to repel dragons for up to sixteen hours per application.”

  “Does it work?” one of Grumpy’s friends asked?

  “No one has ever come back looking for a refund,” I answered, smiling.

  Twenty minutes later I was helping the three of them load their gear into a rather anachronistic cart pulled by two ponies and steered by an old man in a funny hat.

  As I made my way back into the store the phone began to ring. I reached it on the 4th ring. “This is Vic, can I help you?”

  The voice on the other end belonged to a very young girl and she sounded not quite scared, but close. “I hope so. An owl banged into my window tonight. I think it’s still breathing, but I’m not really sure. But anyway, it had a message tied onto its right leg. And well, um, there’s no way I can get to London in time to buy. . .” The
caller’s voice trailed off.

  “I’m assuming you need some robes, a spell book, a wand, and other assorted things?”

  “Yes,” she said, brightening. “Do you have them in stock?”

  “I do. Just bring your letter here tomorrow and we’ll get you all fixed up.”

  “Wonderful, this is all so I exciting, I can hardly wait.”

  “Then we’ll see you tomorrow, goodnight.” I hung up the phone before she could say anything else.

  I was happy for the kid, really I was, she was about to start a grand adventure. But right now all I could think about was how my life was about to change; and, that really, no matter how tonight turned out I couldn’t imagine that my life was going to be the better for it. When I signed on for this I could never have imagined it playing out this way. But then I guess that’s the secret of life: nothing ever goes as planned.

  I locked the door and flipped the phone over to voice mail. I needed to think, to clear my mind for what I knew was coming. Really it had all started three years ago when Sabrina had reached out to me.

  *

  She’d called my cell, I almost never gave that number out so I was very surprised when it rang and I didn’t recognize the number calling. “This is Vic, can I help you?”

  “Vic, this is Sabrina.”

  “Sabrina?”

  “Yes, you remember, Sabrina from All Saints Cemetery.”

  “Oh, yes, certainly.” It had been twenty-five years since that night in the cemetery, but you don’t forget watching the Powers duel, nor do you forget a face as beautiful as Sabrina’s.

  “This is awkward, I’m calling about your master.”

  “My master? Oh. . . you mean my boss.”

  “Right, when was the last time you saw him?”

  “I’m not really sure I should be having this conversation with you.”

  “The last time I saw your boss was when he visited with my master. The two drank three bottles of Chianti and then they just staggered off arm in arm into the night. That was almost four weeks ago and my master hasn’t returned since. My sources tell me you’ve been working the store alone of late.”