The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  I was left alone with these new things long enough to think about them, which I did. Then other poets from the palace came and dressed me in them.

  “There is no future for you, Joy, nor any future for any of us, in a land where the president who is known as Uncertainties exists at the same time as you do. Now Joy must put an end to him.”

  I asked them the same question I’d asked him and that he would never answer: Why had I been raised up so high among them, from speck to where I was? They said it was not only because my curls were tight and tiny and stuck out around my face like a great amphitheater, but also because I had brought unusual and important things to poetry. “It would be a pity for poetry if your syllables were stopped,” they said, “so be vigilant.”

  They belted my dagger about me, they coiled my whip over my shoulder and led me to the arena, a place where I’d only heard poetry before, though I’d often wondered at the brown stains on the far wall. When I’d asked about them, you’d always answered that they were the stains of bad poems.

  The fight, you told me, was to be fought to the sound of our poems, so that I and the president must never stop talking and never stop fighting. Also we must never turn our backs or grovel, as that would change death to non-death, for no one could kill a groveler. Then, if I had killed him, I was to put my ear on the ground and grovel one last time, which would be the last forever. If the president, on the other hand, killed me, he’d not have to do that, having already, when he’d won and become the president, come to his last grovel.

  You poets of the palace were to be our audience, and you sat on the tiers with your tablets on your laps, ready to write out the poems we would be saying to each other. Those in red robes were to be for me. Those in green were for he who had taught me everything I knew, who had nursed me, waited on me, drunk wine with me, and once gave me a handful of jade marbles.

  “It’s possible to win with the poetry,” you told me, “and yet still die.”

  I wasn’t one of you and I didn’t fight as you were used to. I threw off my whip at once, for I wasn’t good at it and didn’t want the added weight. I took out my dagger right away, and you all made great barking sounds I had not heard you ever make before, though you said to each other that what I did was not against any of the rules. There was no rule about it because no one had thought to do that.

  The president, Noble-Master, turned me and twirled me and forced me back with his whip. All skills I had never mastered. He did this over and over, but I kept coming in, each time trying some new way and trying to grab his whip, which he skillfully kept away from me. He could wind me up and turn me and throw me against the back wall until it was my blood that mixed with the older stains. Then he could unwind the whip so fast I couldn’t grasp it and only got rope burns trying. I gave up on the whip and went, instead, after the poem that hung from his helmet on that long banner. (His poem read: The absolute is full of uncertainties.) I jerked at it and had his helmet off before he’d realized what I was doing. Again, it was obviously not something that any of you would have done.

  For a moment the slow intonations of his fighting poem stopped, and his own side called to him that time was running out for the sound of the next syllable.

  His neck was bared to me now, and yet he stood still, shocked, and I stood still, too. Finally he spoke, and, according to the timers, just in time. “To the uncertainty of death,” he said, “I’m sending Joy, poet from the lesser world.” I, at the same time, was saying, “I have learned to like you,” and, at that moment, as he stood, still dazed, I came out of my own shock. And cut off his tail.

  There was a roar of rage from all of you. It was clear that nothing of the sort had ever happened before. In my mind it had been that or his head, and I decided at the last moment that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—try to kill him.

  He turned, then, dagger out, and fought me with a rage I’d never seen in him in all the time that I had spoiled syllables. He was so angry, he lost all skill and flailed out, scratching at me and even biting. His poem fell apart to mere mouthings. “Not done… not to be considered”… and that there, “Couldn’t be a president with only half a tail. Might as well,” he said, “be without ears.” At which point I clipped the left one off. At this, he fell and groveled. He wasn’t dead, but he said he could never again rule poems. “I’m as good as dead,” he said, but I said, “No. You’re my poet. If no one else’s, then mine.”

  “If it comes from your mouth,” you all said—“If it comes from the mouth of Joy, the president, Humble-Master-of-the-Poem, then it must be.”

  And that is how I came to be here before you, making accepting gestures, being the six hundred and twelfth poet to become president, and here, my friend and servant, still alive—though in his own mind only half so, having lost all but one way of greeting you, and all but one way of showing pleasure—yet, to me, alive and singing, the even-humbler master, the poet, Uncertainties, and, as I am also, sure of only a few small things.

  The Start of the End of It All, The Women’s Press, 1990

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1999

  Looking Down

  THOSE WITH heavy thighs, flat faces, funny little teeth all in a row. We fly down and knock them over with nothing more than the rush of our air. Not even touch them. And they, yearning after us, try to invent ways to get themselves up into our sky while we squawk by, laughing. We could save them when they fall, but we never do. We let them drop down in their imitation wings, gliders, and such, and they always do drop.

  We know what birds mean to them: fire and smoke on the one hand, air on the other. Or should I say, sky—limitless sky. A bird—particularly birds such as we—a bird is better than a mountain top. Better than a tower, and they do build towers. Lightning strikes them. Burns them up. Wind blows them down. Their broken towers lie all across the land. Only the newest ones still stand or those few that are built of stone.

  Also we are omens, both for good and evil, depending on the circumstances. We have heard them wailing when the sky darkens with us as though we were the storm, yet it is only us at our fall gathering or our spring dancing.

  They dance, too, and sing. Paint themselves in imitation of our colors. Line their skinny arms with fallen feathers and flap about. And always they bow down to us when we sit, as we sometimes do to dry, in rows along their roofs or perch on their tower tops. They leave flowers for us. Not that we care anything about flowers. You can’t eat a flower. They leave bowls of milk, too. Birds don’t drink milk. They leave it also for the snakes. Cats come for it.

  There are others they bow to. The snakes of course, and even the cats sometimes. I have stolen and eaten both the family snake and the family cat, which shows which of us are lesser. I hadn’t done this before, but I had to. (I have even drunk the milk.) The fall gathering has come and gone. I had thought to follow soon—to get well and follow. Not stay until the leaves fell.

  Snow will come. I’ve not seen that nor ever wanted to. The milk will freeze. The tower where I rest is rickety, sways in the wind as though it were a tree, yet is not a tree, therefore will fall. But perhaps I’ll not last that long anyway.

  I coasted here—no, I fell, having been twisted in a wind devil I’d not avoided in time—fell, torn and broken, hid out until too hungry, climbed down from the tower by hand, one step at a time as they would do it. The cat, the snake, my last good meal. Now only milk. I feel dizzy. I wonder, once I climb down for it, if I’ll be able to climb back up. Such a thing, for one of us to have come to this low point.

  Ah, but this evening I see that the milk bowl is set away from the tower and near to the shack. It’s a trap. I know that. They want, no doubt, to catch the one who’s eaten their cat and snake. If they manage to do that they’ll have one of us in their power, which has not happened before. They’ve tried, but never succeeded. The flock saw to it that those of us caught in their tree nets were never taken alive.

  They bring the milk at twilight. The creatures, s
uch as I, that drink it come out after dark, but I have a terrible thirst and it’s the milk I want more than any stray cat or snake or small bird. I climb down almost as soon as the milk is put out. I crawl to the shack on knees and elbows. I see one of the half-people watching me from the window but I’m past caring. When I lean to drink, she comes out and stands in the doorway quietly as if she thought she might startle me and that then I would flap away, which is impossible. I don’t care. I’m thinking: let it all happen the way it has to happen, there are no brothers or sisters left here to see to it that it is otherwise.

  After I drink, she bows down to me, head to ground, calls me, “Lord of Summer, Flight, and Trinity, having incorporated snake and cat whole,” she says, “without chewing, therefore having become a sacred three.” I raise myself from the bowl, knowing I’ve milk dripping from my mouth yet, even so, thinking to loom over her displaying myself in all my splendor, but I have a dizzy spell. Can’t fall now, I tell myself and then I do.

  Some of us have fallen from great heights, wounded or sick (as, but for the tower, I also, would have done). Some of us have fallen out of cliff nests, too bold when too young, or have been pushed out by a larger sibling. Some of us have caught a downdraft when near the ground. But who would have thought one of us would fall from a half-standing position and who’d have thought that I would be the one to do it.

  I wake in a musty, dark place void of wind, void of sky. A rack has been made for me to hold my wing in tension, up and to the side behind me. A throne has already been carved and decorated for me. (Or had they been carving at it ever since I’d glided to their tower? Or perhaps they’d always had it, waiting for one of us to be taken alive.) I have been strapped into it. An offering has been set before me: dried yellow flowers and a good goat broth. There’s a fire in the fireplace. Also a sweetish smell from something smoldering in a flat dish.

  I have never been in such a place, where there’s just barely enough room for me to be arranged, as though on display, along one wall, the longest wall. I hang there against it. The rack on one side holds my wing so extended that I, myself and my throne are almost in the corner. Around my neck there is a heavy chain or perhaps a necklace of some sort, too short for me to see. On my head there’s an uncomfortable circle of metal. I suppose it’s some sort of crown, as though I needed anything more than my topknot.

  I’m still shaking with fever and still thirsty, but I can’t reach the broth. Then she comes from behind a curtain and holds the bowl to my mouth. I would have bitten her, but I haven’t the energy. She also gives me water… a great deal of water, and I can finally drink as I’ve been wanting to. Then she calls and three of the half-men come in.

  “He groans, he sighs,” she tells them. “It is meaning that the times will be harsh, the winter cold and early.” At first I wonder why she says this and then I think that there are strange things happening and that, rather than protest that I meant no such things, I will keep silent and beware. “Tonight,” she says, “or tomorrow, the first snow will be coming,” she says. “The tower will fall, having served a good purpose.”

  “Lucky for him,” one of the half-men says, “that we have rescued him in time.”

  “The gods are lucky,” she says. “This one has come to us with a purpose. Do not doubt it.”

  That night the winds and the snow come just as she said I said they would. The windows in front of me glow with a strange white light. I can see the flakes blowing sideways. And the tower does fall. I had dozed, and I heard the crashing of it as if in my dream and thought that I still lay out on it and had come down with it as it fell. I strain at the bonds and the rack and it’s my own squawking that wakes me. One arm comes loose. I’m very weak, but it does come loose and I think that they don’t know my strength at all-what it takes to fly south or even cling to rocks by toes and fingers. They’ve no idea. I will be able to escape whenever I feel like it.

  My crown has fallen. In the glow of the coals and the glow from the windows, I can see it lying upside down in front of me, glints of glassy blue stones and gold (that gold they always like so much though I have better in one single breast feather). Rather nice, I suppose, if one must settle for less than myself, but I know my topknot is nicer. I have seen myself, and many times, not only in pools, but in the little mirrors we often steal from the doors of their hovels. I know how magnificent I am, though perhaps not quite so much so here in their dim room.

  She comes, having heard my squawking I suppose, but by then I have settled myself so that she’ll not see me in some undignified way nor see that one arm is loose. She has again brought me a drink. This time a tisane. I recognize it. Valerian with camomile. We have used the same. Also something fermented in it. Her little teeth don’t look quite so funny to me any more, nor her odd, white, edible hand. Edible. We’ve not done that. We’ve let them be (after all, they have a culture of a sort, however crippled they and it may be), most of us, that is, though there have been young ones of us, just fledged, who’ve carried off smaller ones of theirs. But mostly we have an unspoken rule that we let them be, partly just to see what they do next, and if they ever would find a way to get themselves into our sky. We’d like to see that day, and sometimes speak of it and laugh.

  And their women! What use have we for them? Though we’ve never minded showing off our colors to them. No need for crowns, yet she picks it up and puts it back on my head, carefully so as not to crimp my topknot. I could sleep better without that crown and I have a flash of rage. Beware, I think, of the anger of the gods, but the pale hand, the row of teeth, the broth, the soothing drink, all mix—all begin to seem an equation of needs met with the creature who brings the comfort. Also I can see there are qualities I’d not known about before and that I might better take advantage of, especially in my present state, and sights I’d not seen that please me, as the brightness of snow at night.

  In the morning the sun is out and all the half-people come to see the fallen tower and the captured god. She pulls the curtains wide, lights many lamps and hooks shiny reflectors behind them, puts up mirrors to mirror the sun. Guards come and stand by my side. They wear imitation topknots rather like my own, held on by a strap around their heads, but they droop and flop, and have no sheen.

  I know, on the other hand, that the lights shining on me make me glow but I don’t have the energy to puff myself up to my magnificence, nor can I, anyway, achieve full brilliance sitting down like this with my scissortail dangling out of sight behind me, and who knows what state it’s in. I’ve had no chance nor energy to attend to it, nor a brother or sister to help me.

  Cushions are set out for the half-people, large ones for knees and small ones for foreheads. Then the half-people are allowed to file in. They are warned neither to touch nor to tempt the god, nor to ask about the future, and to seek only one favor. They stand and look at me for several minutes, obviously, even in my present state, awed by me. Then they bow down. The lights and the sun in the mirrors shine into my eyes from behind them so that they can see me but I can’t see them except as silhouettes. They kiss my feet though they’ve been told not to. Some kiss my every toe. They ask their favors -small favors, even so small as for one more little bag of oats. “All I ask is that I be chosen to sing at Solstice.” “All I ask is that they buy my spoons.”

  I keep silent. Had I spoken, it would have been to ask, on my own behalf, that the lights not shine into my eyes, and that I should not be kissed anymore on knee or toes.

  I can make a clacking noise louder than their axes in the hills or their hammers as they build their towers. In here it would vibrate from wall to wall. At the same time that I do that, I can warble out a loony, laughing cry. To laugh again would feel good and it would drive them all away for sure, but I also want to continue to be looked after, sheltered until spring, and fed good goat parts.

  So it goes on and on into the afternoon. I keep silent. There are, now and then, more serious requests, though always made smaller than one would think to
ask. “All I ask,” for instance, “is that my daughter should see for just one season, or just one month, or, if one of these is too much to ask, then for just one short day.” I think, half-requests, like the half-people that make them. “All I ask is that I be allowed to live through this next month until the birth of our baby so I can see if it’s a boy or girl and give the name. Perhaps even last until I see the first smile.” On and on it goes. ‘’All I ask is that I should be pleasing to Lutha.”

  I’m tired… tired of the whole thing. “Granted,” I say.

  It had evidently not been foreseen that the god himself would actually take part in any of this. Everyone except the guards leaves, and I can hear there’s much discussion both outside near the windows and in an anteroom I’d not realized was there. I can’t hear much of it for they speak as though to keep their words from me, but I do find out a startling thing: that Lutha is the half-woman who has been looking after me, that she is considered the most beautiful woman of all the half-women and has had many suitors, but that she has dedicated herself to me alone, that she has, in fact-the thought is so shocking to me that I almost can’t take it in, and I think that I must not have heard properly—married me, that she is called the “bride of the gods,” that the ceremony had been performed before I’d come to and that a proxy stood in for me to say my parts, that she had wanted only and always to have one of us as husband. I learned all this because now she is chastised for it. They raise their voices. They tell her I am a false and a sick god who will continue to interrupt important ceremonies, perhaps even those that are to take place later on to ensure a happy winter.

  We mate for life so it is not a decision we make lightly. That this half-woman should have been given to me as a bride is ludicrous. And it’s odd, for she has never even seen me at my finest. Only seen me sick and fainting, with feathers in such a deplorable state that even if I were healed enough to fly I might not be able to.