Magic City

by Paula Guran

  “You shouldn’t be out here without Shep.” Miz Willow wagged a finger at her. “Don’t you go leavin’ him home. Bad things out here in the night. You need your dog.”

  “Yes, Miz Willow.” Mari June could only whisper.

  “That’s better. You promise?”

  “Yes, Miz Willow.” And Mari June squeaked as something cold poked her hand. She looked down. Shadow streaked the ground, but right there, by her left knee, it kind of lifted, almost like a low bank of black fog with the shape of a dog. A big dog, maybe a German shepherd. The cold poked her again, moist, like a dog’s nose. “Shep?” She whispered it, felt Miz Willow’s eyes on her, felt the night tapping an inky toe, waiting. “Good boy.” She swallowed, what the hell, said it out loud. “Good boy, Shep, good boy for coming. I won’t leave you home again. I promise.”

  When she looked up again, Miz Willows was clear across the park, striding along like a man, like she always did, the shadows swirling around her legs. And if she looked at them sideways, didn’t really look, you know, she could almost, almost see rottweilers and furry malamutes, boxers, German shepherds, and even a border collie or two. They melted into line of scrawny elms at the far edge of the park and . . . vanished.

  “Good boy, Shep.” She almost-looked at him, admired the upright ears, the fine head. “You’re really handsome, you know? Let’s go home. Quick before Mama gets there.”

  She walked straight back, right between the cars that looked at the asphalt with their bright, headlight eyes. You can pass, the night breeze whispered in their grilles. You can pass with him. And she wasn’t afraid.

  They just made it.

  She stripped off her clothes as Mama’s key turned in the locks, pulled the covers up as her footsteps creaked down the hall, breathed slow and even as Mama peeked in the door. “You’re a good girl, baby,” Mama murmured low and soft. “You sleep well, honey.” At the foot of the bed, Shep watched her and didn’t growl, but after Mama closed the door, his bright golden eyes filled the room with a dim, warm light.

  All kinds of rumors went around in the next few days . . . Littl Big, Brushy, Spell Boy, Breaker, Fireball, they got busted for dealing, got offed by the Ninth Street Knights, were robbing banks in Philly. Mari June listened to the “I heard they . . . ” whispers and nodded and didn’t tell anybody that she’d heard anything at all. And her mom threw a fit because some punk had gone down the line of cars parked on the block and had banged up every one. “You tell me what the cops want a raise for when they can’t even catch a bunch of hoodlums out smashing up cars with a hammer, huh? You wanna tell me?”

  And Mari June didn’t tell her it wasn’t a hammer that made those dents. Shep went everywhere with her, just like she’d promised. He curled up under her chair and stared at Tim Pollack when he stared at her and he stopped. He slipped through the lunchtime crush in the halls by her side, and not one person stuck her with a pin or tried to grope her. He lay under the table at lunch while she ate her peanut butter sandwich and one day Emiline Jackson and Sheraline Brown came over to sit down, and they were pretty nice, and popular, too, not cheerleader popular but pretty cool. They were nice. Shep thumped his tail at them.

  She took Shep out for a walk every night after Mama made her check up call, even if she wasn’t done with her homework. They watched Mr. Kingston dance in his prom dress and listened to Mrs. Silvano sing with Mr. Silvano, which made Shep put his head back and howl like a wolf. Mari June howled with him, and they both ran away, her giggling, Shep panting, as Ms. Johnson came out of her house looking thoughtful, peering after them as she lit her cigarette and settled down to wait.

  Then they went to the park and the cars looked down at the asphalt and not at Mari June, and they walked through the darkness and the moon said polite nothings in the vault of its sky and nobody bothered them. And sometimes they saw Miz Willow and Mari June always waved.

  Politely.

  Mary Rosenblum has been publishing her fiction since 1988, when she graduated from the Clarion West Writers Workshop with a sale to Asimov’s, and has been a finalist for both Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as a winner of the Sideways in Time Award and the Compton Cook Award for Best First Novel. She writes speculative fiction as Mary Rosenblum and mystery as Mary Freeman, with eight novels out from New York publishers and dozens of published short stories. She has returned to Clarion West twice as an instructor, and divides her time between writing and working as a “literary midwife” (see www.newwritersinterface.com) for new authors. When she’s not working with words, she’s flying a small plane as an instrument-rated pilot.

  The City: An ordinary city—probably somewhere in Australia—with comfortable suburban neighborhoods.

  The Magic: “Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”—Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

  WORDS

  Angela Slatter

  She was a writer, once, before the words got out of hand.

  She would read aloud what she’d written that day, dropping sounds into the night, into the sometimes balmy, sometimes frosty air. After a while, she noticed that the words seemed to warm her no matter what the season.

  Her voice became stronger, so soon she could read for longer. The sentences took on a life of their own, prancing and weaving themselves into the shapes of the things they described. She was always busy concentrating on those words that stayed obediently on the page, but one night, something caught her eye. A flowing diphthong movement, the graceful pivot of an elision as they wrapped themselves around each other and turned into a small, pale pink dragon, which then disappeared with a slight pop.

  She knew, then, that she’d become something other than a writer. The word wordsmith had hidden itself away in protest against misuse about three hundred years ago and refused to come out. The word witch appeared but she ignored it, thinking it best.

  Her house and the house next door were quite close—you could look out the window of one almost into the window of the other. Three children lived there, two little girls and a boy. They knew about the words before she did, had been watching nightly for some time. Their parents had been pleased—indeed so relieved as to not be pricked by suspicion—when they started going to bed at the prescribed hour without protest.

  It gave the children time to brush their teeth, struggle into their pajamas, get tucked in by their parents, and for George to sneak out of his room, across the hallway into his sisters’ and for them all to take their places on the edge of Sally’s bed just before the writer settled down on the old green velvet couch in her living room. Rose would hand out the hard sweets, the fruity ones that could be sucked on for almost an hour before they dissolved into a sugary puddle in the mouth. Unless Sally crunched down on hers (which she frequently did); then, she would chew noisily on the friable shards and beg Rose for another, promising not to do it again.

  It may have gone on for years, until the children grew sick of enchantment or the writer died or someone moved away. It might have gone on forever if it hadn’t been for the wolf. The writer rewrote “Little Red Riding Hood,” which was Rose’s favorite story and the one that frightened Sally the most, so when the wolf swirled into being in the middle of the sitting room, gray and shaggy and rather larger than the word-creatures usually were, Sally screamed.

  It still could have been okay had their parents not been walking past the bedroom. Their father flung open the door before the children had a chance to get away from the window, before George could duck under a bed, and before the word-wolf had time to dissipate with a half-hearted snarl.

  The parents put their children to bed, all in George’s room on the other side of the house. They held a discussion. They went next door and knocked.

  “We don’t like it,” said the mother.

  “We don’t like what you do,” the father said.

  “They’re fairy tales,” explained the writer.

  “They’re
not . . . ” hissed the mother, “not normal! Stop or we’ll tell.”

  “Tell whom?” asked the writer. “And what would they do? It’s a long time since the age of torches and pitchforks.”

  The parents didn’t think this was funny at all. The mother rang the Neighborhood Watch chairman, Mrs. Finnerty, who was also on a Committee for Moral Hygiene (though no one seemed to know what that was).

  The mother told Mrs. Finnerty what they’d seen; she also said that the writer walked around naked a lot. Mrs. Finnerty (whose husband had run away with a young nudist) found her doubts about the word-creatures overcome when she heard about the nakedness.

  Letters began to arrive for the writer, insisting she desist. She read the first two; tore up the rest as soon as she drew them out of the letter box, recognized the stiff, off-white envelopes, ripped them up right in her front yard so the whole neighborhood could see. She threw the pieces into the air and even if it were a still day, a breeze would start up and carry the pieces of torn envelope and letter into the gardens of her neighbors. The ones that wafted to Mrs. Finnerty’s always managed to land on her doormat and spell out rude words. In spite of herself, Mrs. Finnerty started yelling some of those rude words back, coupling them with witch.

  The writer kept reading out her stories, the word-creatures becoming more and more realistic, staying longer before the inevitable pop. She started concentrating on landscapes, too, and buildings, so small villages would spring up on the carpet in her living room, with tiny people wandering the cobbled streets, carts pulled by donkeys, vendors arguing with customers in the markets; and all making a tremendous noise for their size until they disappeared.

  The police were called but they weren’t sure what they could do. They (a fat sergeant and two thin young constables) spoke with the writer and she smiled and laughed and refused to stop. She wasn’t disturbing the peace, she was in her own home, and as far as they were aware, there was no legislation against writing this way. To the disappointment of his companions, the sergeant reluctantly refused her offer of coffee and cake and went next door.

  They watched from Sally and Rose’s bedroom window, with the neighborhood parents and Mrs. Finnerty all crowded in behind them. One of the young policemen found the discarded bag of candy under Sally’s pillow (where Rose had stuffed it on that fateful night), surreptitiously put one in his mouth, and sucked at it.

  As they watched, the clock clicked over to eight-thirty and a chime sounded, deep and sonorous. The writer came into her living room, gave the audience a small smile and shuffled the papers in her hands, rather like someone preparing to give a speech at a hostile debating society. She wore a long dress, green and flowing—the young policeman sucking on his sweet rather hoped it was a bathrobe that she would discard fairly soon—and her hair was caught up and covered by a scarf.

  She turned her back to the window and began to murmur; this evening she did not use her clear reader’s voice to project the story, but the word-creatures came all the same. Fairies, dragons, wolves, striped sheep and tuxedoed bears, candy-covered trees, men made of tin and women of cloud, and finally, a door.

  It was a perfectly normal door if a little ornate, dark-wooded and banded with iron engraved with stylized holly. It was stout and it stayed. The neighbors and police saw her reach for the handle and turn it. The door opened and they could all see hills, sky, apple trees, and a cottage with many windows, many rooms. The writer turned and smiled and as she did so they saw their children—twenty-seven in all, from teenagers to babies, with Sally and Rose and George in the forefront.

  The children waved to their parents and stepped through the door, one by one until only the writer remained. Parents screamed.

  Soon, police and parents were battering at the writer’s house. She heard the windows break, the wood tear as men as angry as bears broke through the door. She saw the young policeman still sitting on the edge of Sally’s bed, his mouth slightly open, the candy wet and just visible between his lips. She stepped through the door and closed it just as the first parent staggered into the room.

  In their rage, they burned the house, but some nights you can see shades and shadows dance around the big tree in the yard. And the young policeman comes by sometimes, to sit beside the blackened ruins and watch in hope of a door.

  Specializing in dark fantasy and horror, Angela Slatter is the author of the Aurealis Award-winning The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, the World Fantasy Award finalist Sourdough and Other Stories, and the Aurealis finalist Midnight and Moonshine (with Lisa L. Hannett). She is the first Australian to win a British Fantasy Award (for “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” in A Book of Horrors, Stephen Jones, ed.). Forthcoming in 2014 will be The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, Black-Winged Angels, and The Female Factory (with Lisa L. Hannett). In 2013 she was awarded one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships. She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, and is a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006. She blogs at www.angelaslatter.com about shiny things that catch her eye.

  The City: The fictional Santo del Vado Viejo, a city in Arizona.

  The Magic: When gang members resort to brujería and go after the new kid in town, its a good thing he knows some local Kikimi tribal members with special powers of their own.

  DOG BOYS

  Charles de Lint

  I hate this place. Hate the heat and the dust. Hate this stupid chi-chi gated community. And I so hate my new high school. You really have to wonder what my parents were thinking. They move us to Desert View with its walls and patrols, and a security checkpoint to get in, but they send me to Rose Creek High, a public school. Hello? Filled with the people a gated community keeps out.

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t judge. Most of the kids are Mexicans or Indians with a few blacks, Asians and, white kids like me, but I’m cool with that. We had a wide racial mix at my old high school and I got along fine with just about everybody. But here, the Mexicans run in serious gangs and the Indians look at me like I’m supposed to constantly apologize for what my ancestors did to theirs, except my ancestors only got to North America in the fifties.

  I was online with my best friend Ronnie last night looking for advice, but he just gave me the same drill he did before my parents pulled us out of the good life in Atlanta and dumped us here: Keep your head down until you get the lay of the land. Don’t make waves, but don’t take any shit.

  Today is the first day of week three and I’ve already decided to treat this school like jail. Just keep out of trouble and do my time until I can graduate. Except in the middle of the afternoon I’ve got a hall pass to go to the can and I come across some big Mexican dude pushing around a little Indian girl in the stairwell.

  Keep your head down. Don’t make waves.

  Sure. Good advice. But you’ve also got to do the right thing.

  “Hey,” I call to him. “Leave her alone.”

  Cold eyes rise to meet mine. I can tell he’s memorizing my face. “You going to make me?”

  “If I have to.”

  For a long moment, it could go either way, but then he shoves the girl hard enough to knock her off her feet.

  “This isn’t finished, amigo,” he says as the stairwell door slams behind him.

  I help the girl up, give her space once she’s on her feet. She straightens her shirt, but she doesn’t thank me.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she says instead. “Now we’re both dead.”

  She’s probably right. The bandas—the local gangs—don’t wear their colors at school, but everybody knows who they are. Except for the new guy. Which would be me. The dude I told off is probably one of them.

  Too late to do anything about it now.

  “My name’s Brandon,” I tell her.

  “I know. The new kid. I’m Rita.”

  “What was that guy’s deal, anyway?”

  She shrugs. Up close she’s really cute and curvy. Her skin’s a warm coffee brown,
hair black, eyes like a deer, soft and dark. She’s dressed in jeans and sneakers with a rose-colored T-shirt under a gray hoodie.

  “He’s just trying to wind up my brother,” she says.

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “Nothing. The rez boys just naturally piss everybody off—but especially the 66 Bandas.”

  From walking through the halls and listening to the other kids talk, I’ve already learned enough to know that the 66ers are the biggest of the Mexican gangs here in Santo del Vado Viejo.

  “Great.”

  She nods. “And seeing how that was Bambino Perez—Big Chuy’s little brother—now they’re all pissed off at you—and me, too.”

  “So can’t we—I don’t know. Go to someone and get help? The office? The cops?”

  “What universe did you beam in from? You haven’t seen what the bandas do to snitches.”

  “Right. That was stupid. But everything’s so different here from back home.”

  Her eyebrows go up.

  “Well, for one thing,” I tell her, “back there you stood a pretty good chance of getting through a day without being knifed or shot.”

  “Welcome to your new world.”

  “Why do you put up with it?” I have to ask.

  “I’m not going to be the reason there’s a war between the rez boys and the bandas. So Bambino knows he can yank my chain and I’m not going to tell anybody about it. But now you’ve stood up to him and I was there, so all bets are off. His pride’s going to demand payback.”

  What have I gotten myself into?

  “The real problem,” she says, “is that in the eyes of the law, the only thing lower than a Mexican is an Indian. If there’s trouble, we never come off well.”