Firebirds Soaring

by Sharyn November

  “But I have loved you since I first saw you,” the king insisted, although her words and the vision had shaken him. He took a deep draft of the ale to drive them away.

  “Love? Well now. You feel what you feel, and I feel what I feel, but that doesn’t mean you have to fit us into a story and wreck both our lives.”

  “Then you . . .” the king hesitated. “I know that story. You’re the goddess Sovranty, whom the king meets disguised in a village, who spends one night with him and confirms his sacred kingship.”

  She laughed. “You still don’t see me. I’m no goddess. I know that story though. We’d have our one night of passion, which would confirm you in your crown, and you’d go back to your palace, and nine months later I’d have a baby boy. Twenty years after that he’d come questing for the father he never had.” She took up a twist of straw that was on the table and set it walking. The king saw the shape of a hero hidden among the people, then the straw touched his hand and fell back to the table in separate strands.

  “Tell me who you are,” the king said.

  “I’m the girl who keeps the cows and makes the cheeses,” she said. “I’ve lived in this village all my life, and in this village we don’t have stories, not real stories, just things that come to us out of the twilight now and then. My parents died five years ago when the fever came, and since then I’ve lived alone. I’m plain, and plainspoken. I don’t have many friends. I always see too much, and say what I see.”

  “And you wear grey, always,” the king said, looking at her.

  She met his eyes. “Yes, I do, I wear grey always, but how did you know?”

  “When you’re a king, it’s hard to get away from being part of a story,” he said. “Those stories you mentioned aren’t about us. They’re about a king and a village girl and a next generation of stories. I’d like to make a new story that was about you and me, the people we really are, getting to know each other.” He put out his hand to her.

  “Oh, that’s hard,” she said, ignoring his hand. “That’s very hard. Would I have to give up being a silver salmon leaping in the stream at twilight?”

  “Not if that’s who you are,” he said, his green eyes steady on hers.

  “Would I have to stop being a grey cat slipping through the dusky shadows, seeing what’s to be seen?”

  “Not if that’s who you are,” he said, unwavering.

  “Would I have to stop being a grey girl who lives alone and makes the cheeses, who walks along the edges of stories but never steps into them?”

  “Not if that’s who you are,” said the king. “But I’m asking you to step into a new story, a story that’s never been before, to shape it with me.”

  “Oh, that’s hard,” she said, but she put her hand on the king’s hand where it lay on the rough wooden table. “You’ve no sons, have you?”

  “No sons, but I have two younger brothers,” he said, exhilaration sweeping through him.

  She looked around the room. “Your fine bard is singing a song, and your master of the hunt is eating cheese. Your counsellor is taking counsel with the innkeeper, and no doubt hearing all about the affairs of the village. Your lords and ladies are drinking and eating and patronising the villagers. If you really want to give up being a king and step into a new story with me, now is the time.”

  “What do I have to do?” he asked, very quietly, then she pulled his hand and for a moment he felt himself falling.

  It was a little while before anyone noticed he had gone, and by then nobody remembered seeing the two cats slipping away between the tables, one grey and one a long-haired black with big green eyes.

  JO WALTON is the author of four fantasy novels, including the World Fantasy Award-winning Tooth and Claw, and Lifelode. She has most recently written the Small Change trilogy (Farthing, Ha’penny, and Half a Crown). Farthing was nominated for the Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Locus awards. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal, where the food and books available are more varied.

  Her Web site is http://papersky.livejournal.com.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’m remarkably fond of this story. I don’t write much short fiction, but the first part of this one came to me all as a piece in the middle of the night. I got up and wrote it down, and then the next morning I looked at it, wondering what on Earth I’d fished up and whether I ought to toss it back. Sharyn thought it wasn’t long enough, and of course she was right. That’s why she’s a great editor. Thinking about that led me to the other two parts, which now seem inseparably part of the story.

  It’s a very unusual story for me. The people have no names—and normally I’m all about the names. Yet the people and the twilight location have a solidity that’s all about objects. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything with so many lists in it—or lists of such strange things. It’s all about provenance, where things and people come from, what stories they are part of. It’s a fairy story that questions the demands that stories make of their protagonists. Like most fairy tales it’s liminal, it’s all about edges and thresholds and twilight and possibilities. But really, for me it’ll always be the story that made me sit up in bed and say the first line aloud to my husband, then rush off to the computer to write it down. Months after finishing it, I re-read Pamela Dean’s The Secret Country and discovered with a surprise where the two rhymers and the handful of moonshine had come from. Thank you, Pamela, for such a compelling image that snagged in my subconscious that way.

  Carol Emshwiller

  THE DIGNITY HE’S DUE

  The king’s music will have lots of trumpets and drums, a slow pace so the king can keep his dignity.

  There’ll be handmade lace at his throat.

  On the royal barge he’ll be protected from the sun by a silk canopy. There’ll be another barge for his orchestra. Do not listen. The music is for his ears alone.

  The royal picnic will be caviar and white truffles and wild strawberries no bigger than pearls.

  But little acts of kindness—that’s how we live now. We always say thank you, though we don’t mean it. Who should people give things to, if not to us? Who better deserves a meal and a dollar? Mother says it’s our due and we shouldn’t be ashamed.

  Or we steal. Mother says it’s like taxes—they owe us. We have a little tent that just fits the three of us, me and Mother and my little brother. I and Mother carry big packs. My little brother isn’t supposed to carry anything. That’s because he’s heir to the French throne. Mother thinks he’s fourth in the line of succession. Of course there is no French throne anymore. Mother says that doesn’t matter, we’re still royalty.

  Mother says trumpets should sound. She goes “Toot, dee-dee toot, dee-dee toot” as a fanfare. (When he was little he liked it, but not anymore.) Mother says music should be written just for him and, she says, might be one of these days when people realize. She says, “Look at his silky black hair and blue . . . so blue, blue eyes. Look at his nose, already aristocratic even at his age. Can he be other than a prince? ”

  (I have blue, blue eyes, too, and silky hair, but nobody cares.)

  It’s important that he dress as a prince, but we don’t have anything but hand-me-downs. It makes Mother feel bad to dress him in T-shirts and jeans.

  I keep telling her there is no king of France and it is unlikely there will be one ever again. But she says, “Things change. Who knows what’s going to happen? Certainly not you.”

  I may be only fourteen, but I think I know more about it than she does.

  One time when Mother was away, I cut his hair. At least he’s a happy prince now, with a real haircut. He hated that pageboy. When Mother came back she was furious. “How could you? I don’t want him to look like everybody else. Who’ll know now? Once it grows out again, don’t you dare.”

  “He wanted me to.”

  “A prince never gets to do what he wants. He has to learn that.”

  Mother wants to keep him, as she says, “pure.” What she means is, no scars, nei
ther mental nor physical, but it’s too late. He slams around, climbs things. Already there’s a C-shaped scar on his cheek and the marks of the stitches. And as to his mind . . . for heaven’s sake, how can he be a normal anything? Though she doesn’t want normal.

  Mother is teaching him all the things a king needs to know. Especially a French king. History of France: the departments, the châteaux, the rivers . . . “La douce France,” she says. “Never any trees this big. You can walk from one village to another. Every house has a wall around it.” But she hasn’t even been there.

  I’m teaching him other things, like the states right here, the battles that took place in these hills, and, as we go south, slavery. I think a prince should know about slavery. Not that I know much about anything. Still, I did have a chance to go to school for a little while—until our father left us. I was allowed to mingle with the “rabble.” That’s because I didn’t matter.

  When my brother says, “I’m a slave,” I say, “All children are slaves to their parents, but this won’t last forever,” and he always says, “I could be dead before it ends,” and I say, “The way you slam around, that’s probably true.”

  The older he gets, the more he understands that this isn’t the way most children live.

  We often sleep in a park, though there’s always a cop comes in the middle of the night to tell us to move on. Mother says, “Keep your dignity. Remember, noblesse oblige.” We just pack up and head . . . maybe for another park, if we’re in a town, that is. In the country, woodsy spots are good stopping places. Hardly anybody bothers us there.

  We’re safe for a while now, because Mother has us off on the Appalachian Trail. (Yet again.) When you don’t have things to wear to keep warm, you need to follow the birds. We hardly ever have good shoes, and with all this walking, they’re always worn out. Mother found me hiking boots that were set out in the garbage. They were already worn out when she found them.

  Mother is happiest when we get, as she says, our due. Now and then we do. My brother gets the most. People think he’s cute. (Mother hates cute. She keeps at him to stand up straight and hold his head high. She tells him, “Don’t be cute,” and, “Stop smiling. Don’t gesture needlessly. Don’t put your hands in your pockets. Look people straight in the eye.”) She sprinkles her talk with French words. “Alors,” and “Mon Dieu.” “Ah, la voilà.” “Venez mes enfants.” But sometimes I wonder just how good her French is.

  We often hike this trail, going south in blueberry season or going north when fiddleheads pop up. We like it when we see a big rock we remember from the trip before or a gnarled tree we camped under on our last trip. And then there are the lean-tos all along the way. We steal from campers. They don’t expect robbers way out there. We never take their cameras or field glasses or bird books. Mostly we take food and sometimes socks and warm underwear.

  Here I am, thinking we, as if I agreed with Mother—as if I considered myself part of all this, though I guess, in a way, I am. I have to be. I don’t know how Mother would get along without me. I think I’m in charge. Not of where we head or when, but I keep us out of trouble. And I try to add a little bit of a more normal life to my poor brother’s.

  I’m going to try and stop this. I want us to find a permanent place to live. A nice little town where it never gets too cold, but big enough for us to hide in.

  I’ll have to break it to Mother that we aren’t going to live this way anymore. I don’t know what she’ll do. Maybe I won’t be able to stop her. If she and my brother take off alone, I’ll have to follow.

  Napoleon Gustave Guillaume Williamson. We don’t even have a French last name. Did my father approve of that name for his son? Or did Mother change it after my father left us? I wonder that she hasn’t changed our last name.

  He, Guillaume, was all right with this kind of life until last year, when he turned nine. He’s getting too smart to put up with it. I tell him not to worry, I’m going to get us out of this, but I have to find the right place and I have to do it in a way that Mother won’t object to too much—if that’s possible.

  He won’t put up with this much longer. We’re all right now, though. He likes being out on the trail like this. And he likes campers’ kind of food, even the dried stuff. He likes the whole idea of the Appalachian Trail. He loves watching animals and bugs and such. He even loves spiders. Can a prince be interested in spiders?

  I try to make him part of my plans, so he’ll feel he’s working on getting us out of this, too. I tell him to think about the kind of town he wants to live in and when we come to towns he should look around and see if this is the one. I hope that’ll keep him from being too impatient.

  But things change before I’m ready. It starts when Guillaume tells us he wants to be called Bill.

  Mother has a fit. Worse than when I cut his hair. I’ve hardly ever seen her this angry, and usually it’s me she’s mad at.

  It’s a good thing we were out on the trail at the time. Mother made a terrible racket. After she calmed down, I noticed there wasn’t a sound anywhere, the birds were quiet, no rustlings from ground squirrels, even the bugs were quiet. Guillaume . . . Bill and I were quiet, too.

  I think that made him realize things he hadn’t before, and it must have made him angry, too. I guess he decided he wouldn’t wait for my help.

  The king’s crown will be heavy.

  His robes will sweep seven yards behind him. If he

  turns too fast they will trip him.

  Lights will be lit all along the roads he’ll travel.

  Lots of places along the trail, you have to pass through little towns to get from one edge of the trail to the other. In this town the trail goes right along Main Street. There’s a play-ground in the middle. Mother leaves us there while she goes off to scrounge. She’s so angry she hasn’t said a word since our fight yesterday—not really a fight because Guillaume . . . Bill and I just stood there watching. I’m worried about her. I think to follow her, but I know I should take care of Bill.

  I practice calling him Bill a few times (every time I do, he smiles), then I stretch out on a bench to take a nap and . . . Bill . . . goes off to look for bugs or, if he’s lucky, there’ll be a stray dog. I’m tired. None of us slept too well after that “brouhaha” (Mother’s word) about Bill’s name.

  Mother kept waking us up with one more thing—one more reason why Guillaume needs to be Guillaume. She can hardly bring herself to say Bill even just to talk about it. She spits it every time she says it.

  I didn’t think he’d go off without me. But maybe he found this was a town he liked, though it’s a little small for my taste—for hiding in, that is. I’m sure it’s small for Mother’s taste, too. She doesn’t think he’d ever get his due in a small town. The only museum is the Indian museum. Mother says, “A prince must be cultured. Must have a real education: politics, philosophy, and all the arts, too.” Mother worries that he’s into bugs.

  I was afraid this would happen, especially after the Bill episode. I feel really bad. I always thought we were in this together.

  For all I know, Bill is back on the trail beyond the town, but without a tent? He didn’t even take his raincoat.

  Mother is counting on his ignorance. “After all,” she says, “he’s only nine. He can’t get far.” But almost-ten-year-olds are smarter than people think.

  She says, “This is all your fault. You should have been watching.”

  I tell her he’ll just keep running away if our life keeps on as it is. He won’t put up with it anymore, and especially he won’t if she doesn’t call him Bill.

  “I won’t call him . . .” She can’t even say it.

  But suddenly she thinks he’s been kidnapped. She says, “It’s not about that awful name at all, it’s that he’s so beautiful, how can he not be kidnapped?”

  “In that case, you have to go to the police.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “If you think he’s kidnapped, you have to, but I think he just got fed up.�
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  “How can such a beautiful boy not be kidnapped?”

  I tell her we should settle down right here, right now. “It’s the only way to get him back. And if we ever do get him back, you’re going to have to call him Bill.”

  It’s a nice town. Surrounded by green hills. He couldn’t have picked a prettier place. Or is he back on the trail stuffing himself with blueberries? Or he might be at the school, checking out the fourth grade. He’s always wanted to go. Mother’s right about one thing—he’s smart. He knows what an entomologist is and what taxonomy is. Even systematics.

  I wouldn’t mind going back to school again. Funny, some kids get to go and don’t even like it. I guess it’s only when you can’t that you want to.

  I tell Mother she should take a nap in the park. I say, “I know you’re tired after last night. I’ll find him.”

  She knows I’m the one who has to do it. She knows he won’t come to her. But when I find him . . . if I do . . . will he come back even for me?

  I know it’s a waste of time, but I want to check out the little houses on the edge of town . . . especially the ones that lie right near the Appalachian Trail. I’m not that worried about my brother. Besides, he might be near the trail somewhere.

  I like best the houses that are more run-down than others because I imagine cleaning them up: pulling weeds, planting flowers, painting the trim some nice bright color. . . . I wonder if some of those houses with unmowed lawns are empty.

  Then I head for the grocery store, where Bill might be trying to get his due in rotten apples and moldy cheese, but I change my mind. Instead I head for the elementary school to check out the fourth grade.