Magic City

by Paula Guran

  Master!

  She barks. She jumps out of my lap and throws herself, hard, against the window. MasterMasterMasterMaster! She starts scrabbling at it, baying at the top of her lungs.

  Jeremy slams on the brakes. “Whoa! What’s up with her?”

  “Pull over!” I shout. I grab the nearest leash and try to clip it onto Goneril’s collar, but she’s gone totally wild. Jeremy has hardly had a chance to put the van in park when I open the door and Goneril tumbles out, still barking her head off. She pulls me along, across a parking lot and toward a squat white building.

  In our hurry, it’s all I can do to make out the sign on the sliding front door as we whiz past: MEDICAL CENTER.

  Goneril gallops down the corridor. She’s panting and limping, but that hardly slows her down. We rush past folks in wheelchairs, doctors and orderlies and nurses. A few of them shout as we pass, but I can hardly hear their protests over the sound of Goneril screaming in my head.

  Master! Master! Master! Master! Master! Master! Master! Finally we reach a door that won’t open for us. Goneril begins slamming her body against it. A nurse hurries out from behind the nearby desk.

  “Young lady! You can’t go back there. That’s our critical ward—” She stops short when she catches sight of Goneril. “It can’t be,” she whispers.

  “What?” I ask. I try to hold Goneril back, but she’s straining so hard I fear she might break the leash. “What is it?”

  “It’s like she knows he’s in there . . . ”

  But it’s hard to hear the nurse over the barking. Goneril’s noise is almost deafening.

  Let me in! Let me in! Oh please, oh please, oh please let me in!

  I turn to the nurse, eyes wide. “Who’s in there?”

  The nurse is shaking her head in disbelief. “He was brought in last week. Bad car accident out on the highway. He’s not awake often, but every time he is, he asks after his dog . . . ”

  Masterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! The leash slips from my hands and Goneril smashes her head into the glass door, butting it over and over.

  “I’m glad she got home safe.”

  I look at the nurse, dumbstruck. “She didn’t. I don’t know your patient. I’m from an animal shelter.”

  Goneril was right all along. She hadn’t been abandoned by her owner. They’d been in an accident together, and she’d gotten lost.

  The nurse worries her bottom lip. “This is so against the rules,” she says, “but I make exceptions for miracles.” She presses the buzzer over the door. Goneril slips through the crack. The nurse and I follow.

  But she’s already found him. The nurse and I hurry to the bed, where a man covered in bandages and hooked up to tubes and wires is smiling and weakly petting Goneril, who stands over him, licking his face with gusto. Her tail is wagging so fast it’s a blur, and I watch in amazement as her glamour knits itself back up. In a few moments, it’s so thick on her that I can’t see the old white dog at all anymore.

  Master! Goneril cries in ecstasy. Master. I found you! I found you!

  “My sweet Goneril,” says the man. He’s middle-aged, with soft brown eyes and a gentle smile. “Yes, you found me. Good girl. Good, good girl.”

  The nurse checks the man’s vitals, then departs, muttering something about protocol and pulling a tissue out of the pocket of her scrubs.

  The man looks up at me. “Thank you for bringing her back to me, young lady.” He has an odd accent. I can’t quite place it.

  Her name is Malou. Goneril curls up against her master. Her snout is spread into a wide doggy smile, her pink tongue lolling out as she looks at me. She’s been trying to help me find a witch to mend my spells. Of course I told her all I needed was you.

  He raises his eyebrows. “You told her?”

  Yes. She didn’t believe me, though. She’s very stubborn, Master. Oh, and she tried to feed me something called kibble. Goneril grimaces.

  “You have a way with dogs, do you?” he asks me.

  “Yes, but not usually so much as with yours,” I admit.

  “So you do understand her.” He strokes his dog, and color seems to return to his face as I watch. “That’s . . . unusual.”

  “So’s your dog.”

  He nods, his hands buried deep in Goneril’s fur. They both look blissful. Maybe it isn’t just about him keeping Goneril healthy. Maybe the magic works both ways.

  I should go. After all, I’ve left Jeremy alone in the parking lot. I’m beginning to back away when Goneril pipes up again.

  And she fixed my glamour some, Master. She’s really good. Her tail flops on the bedcovers.

  “She did?” The man’s eyes go wide. Strange lights seem to dance inside them. Must be the painkillers. Or something.

  “Please, Malou, wait.”

  I stop.

  His stare is unnerving. He doesn’t look like a man who belongs in a hospital bed. “You swear you have no . . . experience?”

  “With magic?” I laugh. “No, sir.”

  “Then it’s quite extraordinary, what you did. To manipulate another’s spells is very advanced magic.”

  I shrug, sheepish. “I was just trying to help the dog. I’m no witch.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, my dear.” The witch holds tight to his beautiful familiar and studies my face. “Tell me about your family.”

  Diana Peterfreund is the author of ten novels for adults and teens, including the four-book Secret Society Girl series (Bantam Dell); the “killer unicorn novels” Rampant and Ascendant (Harper Teen); For Darkness Shows the Stars, a post-apocalyptic retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion; and the companion novel Across a Star-Swept Sea, a futuristic, gender-switched take on The Scarlet Pimpernel. Her critically acclaimed short stories have appeared on Locus’s Recommended Reading List and in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Peterfreund lives in Washington, DC. with her family. Learn more at dianapeterfreund.com.

  The City: Chicago . . . and other places between there and Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

  The Magic: A very unusual cab driver (with an equally unusual cab) gets a lawyer where she needs to go via a most unexpected route.

  KABU KABU

  Nnedi Okorafor

  (Written with Alan Dean Foster)

  Ngozi hated her outfit. But it was good for traveling.

  Her well-worn jeans had no pockets on the back, thereby accentuating the ass she didn’t have. She’d accidentally stained her white T-shirt with chocolate after stuffing too much chocolate doughnut too fast into her mouth while rushing. And she had grabbed the wrong Chuck Taylor’s: her black ones would have matched better than the red. She’d overslept. Somehow, she hadn’t heard her fucking alarm clock. Now she was going to be late for her plane to New York, which would make her late for her plane to London, which would cause her to miss her connection to Port Harcourt.

  “Shit.” She fought desperately to hail a cab. “Shit!” As a stress reliever, the angry repeating of the word helped to lower her blood pressure about as effectively as it did to draw something yellow with wheels closer to the curb—which was to say, not at all.

  The day’s disaster didn’t end here. The long fingernail of her right index finger had broken and she kept scratching herself with it. Her skin was sandpaper-dry from taking a hot shower and not having time to put on lotion afterward. She had forgotten her antiperspirant. Not only did she feel that she looked like a pig, despite the cold outside she was sweating like one. Wonderful, she thought. Bronchial pneumonia would give her something to look forward to, as well.

  The only saving grace was that she’d had the good sense to pack her things the night before. Her backpack, carry-on, and large suitcase were in far better shape than their owner. She stumbled out of her townhouse and dragged her things down the steps. Outside, the full moon was still visible in the early morning sky. The sun wouldn’t be up for a while. Nothing like leaving for another continent after a restful night’s sleep.

  She saw it then. An unprepossessing veh
icular miracle heading up the street in her direction. Too much to hope for, she thought wildly. She started jumping up and down, waving wildly and shouting. “Taxi! Oh please God, let it be a taxi!”

  As it drew nearer, Ngozi first sensed and then saw that it was traveling too fast, buoyed along by a cushion of heavy-based music. She frowned. Her frantically waving hand dropped to her side and she took a step back. The cab had the sleek but stunned look of a hybrid vehicle. Might be a Toyota or Honda. In the darkness she couldn’t see the logo. The car was weirdly striped green and white and lizard-like. Even from a distance she could see that the exterior was pocked with way too many dents and scuffs, like an old boxer past his prime. As it came closer, she hunted in vain for a taxi number or business logo on the passenger-side door. Neither presented itself. Instead, there was a short inscription:

  Two footsteps do not make a path.

  Standing in front of a fire hydrant, the only open space on the stretch of street, she gawked at the oncoming vehicle. Despite the seriousness of her situation, she made a choice that was as easy as it was quick.

  “I am not,” she muttered to herself, “going near that thing.” She glanced down at her watch and bit her lip. She was out of options.

  The taxi screeched to a halt, and backed up impossibly fast. Then it zigzagged crazily into the undersized and very illegal parking space before her. It was the most adept bit of parallel parking she had ever witnessed. Not to mention quasi-suicidal. Barely an inch of clearance remained in front of or behind the cab. She shook her head and chuckled. “This guy must be Nigerian. Just my luck.” In the back of her mind she felt a twinge of caution. But she didn’t have time to waste.

  The driver turned his music down and jumped out, shrugging a leather jacket over his short-sleeve blue shirt to ward off the chill. He was short, squat, medium brown-skinned, and possibly in his early forties. Definitely Igbo, she decided.

  “I take you wherever you need to go, madam,” he announced grandiosely. His accent immediately confirmed Ngozi’s suspicion. It was quite similar to that of her own parents.

  “O’Hare,” she said.

  “No problem.”

  She hefted her backpack up and stepped to the cab’s passenger door as he loaded the rest of her luggage into the trunk. “I’m running late. Really late.”

  “I see,” he responded with unexpected solemnity. “Where you headed?”

  She was too busy wrestling with the back passenger door to reply. She grew even sweatier. The door wasn’t budging at all. Loading a traveler’s baggage and taking off before he or she could get in was a widespread taxi scam everywhere in the world. The cab driver shut the trunk and smiled at her. “Let me get that for you,” he said. “It doesn’t open for just anyone.” He was chuckling to himself as he came around and grabbed the handle.

  Wrapping his fingers around the worn, smudged metal he gave it a simultaneous twist and tug. The door swung wide with a curious non-metallic pop. Her nose was assailed by the unexpected aromatic scent of cedar wood and oil, both in much stronger concentration than was typical for the usual generic, commercial car deodorant. She slid inside. And promptly froze.

  Nestled snugly between the front seats was a large leafy potted plant. On the ceiling of the car but presently shut was a slightly askew sliding skylight. A wealth of skillfully hand-wrought rosaries and glistening cowry shell necklaces drooped from the rearview mirror. Most startlingly, the entire interior of the cab was intricately hand-inlaid with thousands upon thousands of tiny, multicolored glass beads.

  “Wow,” she whispered, running an open palm carefully over the car’s interior. The feel was smooth but bumpy, like a golf ball turned inside-out. This must have cost a fortune, she thought. It was as if she had stepped inside the world’s most elaborate handicraft necklace. Gazing at her unexpectedly ornate surroundings she tried to imagine someone, or even several someones, taking the time and patience to complete the intricate work of art.

  Further up front was something that looked decidedly out of place in the bead-encrusted, shell-strung interior. Set into the dash beside the battered heating and air-conditioning controls was what looked like a computer installation. Rotating lazily on the screen was a three-dimensional image of a bushy ceremonial Igbo masquerade mask. At least, that’s what Ngozi guessed it to be. As a choice of screensaver, it was a distinctly unsettling one. She shivered. She’d never liked masquerades. Especially the ones at certain parties back home that turned so violent people had to hold back the performers with thick ropes. The damn things were supposed to be manifestations of spirits of dead people and they looked and danced like insane monsters. Serious nightmare material.

  The driver got in and slammed his door shut. If he noticed the anxiety in her expression, he chose not to remark on it.

  “You never answered my question,” he said. Throwing his right arm over the top of the front passenger seat, he twisted to look back at her as he started the cab. Another surprise: despite the vehicle’s scruffy appearance, the engine’s purr was barely audible. Definitely a hybrid, Ngozi concluded. “How do I know where to take you if you don’t tell me where you’re going?”

  “I did.” Ngozi frowned. “Didn’t I say O’Hare? United Airlines. I’m, ah, going to New York.”

  “Got relatives there?” the man inquired. “You visiting your folks?”

  “No.” She wavered and finally confessed, “I . . . I’m going to Nigeria. Port Harcourt. My sister’s getting married.”

  He grinned. “Thought so. You can’t hide where you’re from, O. Not even with those Dada dreadlocks on your head. You still an Igbo girl.”

  “Woman,” she corrected him, growing annoyed. “Woman in a big hurry. I’m a lawyer, you know.” Fuck, she thought. Shut up, Ngozi. How much does he need to know to get me to the airport, man? Next thing he’ll try to scam me out of all my money in some fiercely tricky specifically Nigerian way.

  “Ah, a big Igbo woman, then,” he murmured thoughtfully.

  “And I was born and raised here,” she added, unable to resist. “So I’m Igbo, Nigerian, and American.”

  The driver laughed again. “Igbo first,” he said as he shifted into drive. Jamming the accelerator, he roared out of the illegal parking space with the same lunatic adeptness with which he had darted into it. Flinching, she grabbed the back of the seat in front to steady herself and held her breath. Oh my God, I feel like I’m in Nigeria already.

  As they accelerated out onto the street, he turned the music back up. Listening, Ngozi smiled. It was Fela Kuti, Nigeria’s greatest rebel musician. She loved the song that was playing . . . “Schuffering and Shmiling.” Crooning his unique command of mystery, mastery, and music, Fela spoke to her through the speakers:

  “You Africans please listen as Africans

  And you non-Africans please listen to me with open mind.

  Ahhhh . . . ”

  Ngozi found herself, as always, lulled into reminiscence by his honeyed words. She thought of her father’s village. Where the dirt roads became impassable every rainy season. Where any effort to improve them was thwarted by friendly thievery, lies, and jealousy. Last time she had visited her father’s village with her parents and sister and their departure had been marked by a small riot. It was caused by cousins, aunts, uncles, and strangers battling into the rooms the four of them had just left. They hoped to grab whatever the “visitors from America” might have left behind.

  Among the desperate, hopeful scavengers had been Ngozi’s cousin who was so smart, but unable to afford medical school. And her uncle with the Hausa tribal marks on his cheeks from when he was a little boy. Those three vertical lines on each cheek had served for more than decoration. They were all that had allowed her uncle to survive the civil war of the sixties.

  Ngozi let herself slump back against the surprisingly soft seat. She had not been home in three years. Chicago, America was great. But she missed Nigeria.

  “I want you all to please take your minds out of thi
s musical contraption and put your minds into any goddamn church, any goddamn mosque, any goddamn celestical, including sera-phoom and cheraboom! Now—we’re all there now. Our minds are in those places. Here we go . . . ”

  She smiled to herself. That was Fela—West Africa’s greatest anti-colonialist. Angry, obnoxious, wonderful, and thought-provoking all at the same time.

  They turned onto Halsted and headed south, weaving through traffic at a high speed with an intensity and determination that earned the cab several furious honks and not a few Chicago-style curses from the startled drivers they shot past. Ngozi hung on for dear life. What ought to have been an opportunity for her to cool down was instead one for more sweating as the driver skirted airport-bound limos and huge semis by scant inches. She considered telling him to drop her off at the next stoplight. Up front he was swearing and laughing and at times it was impossible to tell one from the other. His hands worked the horn as if it were a second mouth.

  Eventually he glanced up at the rearview mirror. She struggled to look back with an expression other than that of sheer terror.

  “Why you wear your hair like that?”

  Instantly Ngozi’s fear turned to exasperation. She wasn’t even in Nigeria yet and already she was getting this typical antediluvian macho shit. “Because I like it this way,” she snapped. “Why do you wear your hair like that?”

  “Is that any way to speak to your elder?” the cab driver commented, sounding hurt. “Miss big fancy lawyer with no ass.”

  Ngozi’s eyes widened. Her blood pressure, already high, went up another twenty points. “What?”

  The man laughed afresh. “Do you even speak Igbo?”

  “No. Not a damn word. You got a problem with that?”

  “Ewoooo!” he exclaimed disapprovingly. “Of course I do! You are incomplete, sha.”

  “Oh, give me a break.” She rolled her eyes. “You don’t know me.”

  Dodging around a slow bus, he took a wild turn to the left, which threw her sharply to the side. Straightening, she searched the back seat. “How come you don’t have any seat belts back here?”