Sisters in Fantasy

by Edited by Susan Shwartz

  In the blackness of her room then, Felixity solemnly danced a tango alone. She was stiff and unwieldy, and sometimes bumped into the flimsy furniture. She knew now a raw craving and yearning, a nostalgia as if for an idyllic childhood. She had come to understand who the woman was. She was Felixity, in another world. Felixity’s brain had made the intellectual and spiritual jump swiftly and completely. Here she was a lump, unloved, unliked even, so insignificant she could be made a prisoner forever. But there, she was a being of fire.

  Oh, to go through the mirror. Oh, to be one with her true self.

  And at last she touched the mirror, which was very warm against her hand, as if the sun had just shone on it. But otherwise it gave no clue to its remarkable properties. And certainly no hint of a way in.

  After the vision at eleven o’clock on the eighth night, a month elapsed, and the mirror never altered by night or day.

  Felixity grew very sad. Although she had been thrown into an abyss, idly tossed there, her reaction had been mostly passivity rather than despair, for she was used to ill-treatment in one form or another. But the images in the mirror had raised her up to a savage height, to a plateau of lights she had never before achieved. That she grasped almost at once their implication demonstrated how profoundly she had been affected. And now she was left with the nothing which had always encompassed her and which Roland had driven in beside her, into her cage.

  She ceased to eat the scanty meals and only sipped the coffee or water. In order to hide what she did— she was incoherently afraid of force-feeding—she dropped the portions of food into the lavatory. Felixity became extremely feeble, dizzy, and sick. Her head ached constantly, and she could not keep down the painkillers. She lay on the bed all day, sinking in and out of sleep. She could hardly hear the radio for the singing in her ears. At night she tried to stay conscious, but the mirror was like a black void that sucked her in. Her head whirled and spots of light burst over her eyes, deceiving her, for there was nothing there. She cried softly, without passion. She hoped she would die soon. Then she could sleep indefinitely.

  On the first morning of the new month, before sunrise, Felixity raised her gluey lids and saw the woman who was herself standing up against the inside of the mirror in her mask of yellow jade, a dress like naphtha and the glinting vipers of her golden hair.

  Felixity’s heart palpitated. She tried to get up, but she was too weak.

  Behind the woman who was the real Felixity, there was, as at the start, only blackness. But now the mirror-Felixity lifted her ruby glove, and she held in her fingers a single long coppery feather, the plume of some extraordinary bird.

  If she would only take off her mask, Felixity thought, I’d see that she is me. It would be my face, and it would be beautiful.

  But the woman did not remove the mask of yellow jade. Instead she turned her head toward the feather, and she blew gently on it.

  The breath that came out of her mouth was bloomed with a soft lightning. It enveloped the tip of the feather, which at once caught fire.

  Felixity watched, dazzled, until the flame went out and the woman dissolved abruptly into glowing snow, and the mirror was only a mirror again. Then Felixity turned on her side and fell asleep.

  When it was light, she woke refreshed, and going into the bathroom, bathed and washed her hair. Presently when the tray of food came, she ate it. Her stomach hurt for some while after, but she did not pay any attention. She put on the radio and hummed along with the melodies, most of which she now knew by heart.

  In the afternoon, after the lunch tray, from which she ate everything, the door was unlocked and Roland entered the room.

  Felixity stood up. She had not realized he would arrive so quickly.

  “Here I am,” he said, “I won’t detain you a moment. Just some more of these dull papers to sign.”

  Felixity smiled, and Roland was surprised. He expected acquiescence, but not happiness.

  “Naturally I’ll sign them,” said Felixity. “But first, you must kiss me.”

  Roland now looked concerned.

  “It seems inappropriate.”

  “Not at all,” said Felixity. “I’m your wife.”

  And at this, the gigolo must have triumphed over the thief, for Roland approached Felixity and gravely bowed his head. Indeed, at the press of her flesh on his, after the libidinous life he had been leading, his lips parted from force of habit, and Felixity blew into his mouth.

  Roland sprang away. His face appeared congested and astonished. He went on, stumbling backward, until he reached the door, and then he turned as if to rush out of it.

  So Felixity saw from the back of him, the tailored suit and blue-black hair, and two jets of white flame which spouted suddenly from his ears.

  Roland spun on the spot, and now she saw his face, with yellow flames gouting from his nose and purple gases from his mouth. And then he went up in a noiseless scream of fire, like petrol, or a torch.

  The doorway was burning, and she could not get out of it. Flames were darting around the room, consuming the sticks of furniture as they went. The bed erupted like an opening rose. The mirror was gold again, and red.

  How cold the flames were. Felixity felt them eating her and gave herself eagerly, glad to be rid of it, the vileness of her treacherous body. The last thing she saw was half the burning floor give way and crash down into the lower regions of the house, and the mirror flying after it like a bubble of the sun.

  The servants escaped the blazing villa, and stood in the gardens of the house above the sea, wailing and exclaiming. It was generally concluded that their employer, Roland, and his mad invalid wife, had perished in the inferno. With amazing rapidity, the house collapsed, sending up a pillar of red smoke that could be seen for miles.

  Unseen by anyone, however, Felixity emerged out of the rubble.

  She had not a mark or a smut upon her. She had instead the body of a goddess and the face of an angel.

  Her skin was like honey and her hair like a cascade of golden serpents and in her mouth were the white and flawless teeth of a healthy predator.

  Somehow she had had burned on to her, also, a lemon dress and amber shoes.

  She went among the philodendrons, Felixity, out of sight. And so down toward the road, without a backward glance.

  Horse of Her Dreams

  Elizabeth Moon

  Think of a parade on Main Street, any Main Street, in a small Texas town. Think of the horses, and riding them, tall “Texas girls” with the brilliant smiles and flowing manes of hair you’ve seen on television and in magazines—more spectacular than cheerleaders, more vibrant than California surfers.

  A stereotype, you say? Maybe, or a fantasy—most deeply held by those who can never, never possess it.

  Elizabeth Moon, who rides and lives in a small town in Texas, has seen those parades and the shadows they cast across even the most sunlit lives.

  It was just another little wide spot in the road. One of those towns with a hot shadeless Main Street, some old brick or rock buildings on each side, and a big ugly new government building intended to look modern and urban and progressive, but clunky as a cinder block in a display case of Chinese porcelain. Here it combined City Hall, Fire Station, Library, and Community Center, all in one big chunk of beige precast-concrete panels that hadn’t had time to mellow, but had been there long enough for rust streaks to come down the sides. Three spindly little oaks in planters out front hadn’t really taken hold.

  We knew the town’s reputation as the county scapegoat—it’s our business to know—but that’s not why we came. We—the Frontline News team, Channel 8— had come to cover their annual festival, producing a thirty-second clip for our Weekend Previews on the Friday-night six-o’clock news. So on this July Wednesday, there we were square in the middle of that two blocks of Main Street, in trouble.

  What you want is local color, and what the locals think is color isn’t what you want. Which meant the big sign draped across the City Center sayi
ng “Welcome Frontline News!” wasn’t it. Nor the pair of girls in shorts and clogs who stared at us through the windows of Clara’s Cafe and then sauntered out, flipping their long out-of-date hair and pretending to ignore us. Obviously they didn’t understand what a long lens does to a rear view… anyone’s rear view.

  Main Street had been modernized back in the Fifties or Sixties, more stucco and plate glass than stone or brick. No old hitching rails, no antique streetlights. There weren’t any shady benches for old men to sit and talk and look rural on—so of course we didn’t see any local-color kind of old men. The fiberglass horse over the door of Sim’s Western Wear and Saddlery would have done, except that the week before we’d used a fiberglass horse over the door of another western wear somewhere else. And that one had had a fancy saddle on it.

  Aside from Main Street, all two blocks of it, the town had something under two thousand inhabitants living on maybe sixteen miles of streets. I know, because we drove up and down every single damn street, looking for local color. We found what you always find: a few neat brick houses maintained by fanatics (curtains matching, grass plucked with tweezers at the sidewalk, freshly tarred drive), many more comfortable-looking old brick or frame houses with shaggy yards and big hairy dogs lying in the shade, a few backyards enlivened by a sheep, calf, or pony, and some much older but very dilapidated old shacks that were the wrong sort of local color if we ever wanted to come back.

  Then Joe stepped hard on the brakes and said “God bless,” under his breath, which isn’t his usual expletive.

  She was the kind of local color you almost never find. Not too young, not at all old, shaped perfectly for the camera, and a true honey blonde. She moved well, too, and she was heaving a big old parade saddle (black with silver trim) onto a palomino horse as pretty as she was—for a horse, that is. White blaze and four white stockings, and they sure looked like a pair, her in those tight jeans and tall white boots and blue western shirt with a little white pinstripe.

  There’s a lot that happened later that I don’t understand, but I can’t believe that it was Kelly’s fault. She’s just a normal, healthy, flat-out gorgeous hunk of Texas womanhood, getting ready to lead a parade in three days and happening to catch our eye. Which of course she did.

  Turned out she was a junior (at the university, I figured) and wanted to be a schoolteacher, and thought her mom and dad were wonderful, and wouldn’t miss a—well, I can’t tell you the name of the festival, or you could find the town, now, couldn’t you? But she wouldn’t miss it, and if she married and had to move to (her blue eyes rolled up as she thought about someplace outrageous) New York, even, she’d come back every summer and lead the parade the way she had since… a short pause, and I thought she was counting years, but she said, “Since I got Sunny.”

  Well, people do tend to name horses stupid things like Brownie and Black Beauty and Sunny, and you don’t have to have more sense than that to be married in your senior year to someone headed for law school or medical school, which was clearly her destiny.

  She wasn’t camera shy at all—knew all the tricks, and no wonder, having led the parade all those years. She clucked, and Sunny put those ears forward like a pro. Joe got her talking to the horse, and waving at her mom on the porch. Her mom didn’t look anything like her, but lightning doesn’t strike twice in families, either. My wife’s a show stopping redhead, but our daughter has my hair. And nose. Then he asked her if she’d ride for us, and she beamed, and bounced up on that horse as slick as butter, and pranced him back and forth. It was then I noticed the spurs.

  I don’t pretend to be much of a cowboy, but one thing I do know is that those big old roweled spurs you see pictures of aren’t in use anymore. The humane society had something to say about it, I think. But she had these blued-steel spurs with rowels as long as my fingers, and needle-sharp, or looked like it. Wicked things, that could have hurt if you’d just bumped into them. And she was digging them into that sleek golden horse like he had no nerves at all, with a pretty smile on her lovely face. I looked at the bridle. Sure enough, hung on that fancy black and silver parade bridle was a blued-steel bit that would have held a charging grizzly.

  Funny thing is, that gold horse just pranced back and forth, never jumping sideways when she jabbed the spurs in, never gaping its mouth when she gave a little yank to the reins. And that’s not natural. A horse that’ll prance like that is usually the kind that’s pretty touchy about having its reins yanked and spurs stuck in its sides. I wondered did she have it tranquilized, but the horse’s eye was a clear shining… green.

  It’s a wonder I didn’t grab Joe’s arm in the middle of a shot. Green! Horses don’t have green eyes, and if they did it wouldn’t be that bright, clear emerald green, wickedly alight with mischief. Horses are (forgive me, ladies) stupid. I mean, any animal that could buck people off, but prefers to carry them around on its back… any animal that runs back into a burning barn and sticks its dumb legs in fences and then fights to get loose, tearing itself to shreds… that’s stupid. Black Beauty and all those horse stories aside. Besides, my cousin Don’s horse ran under a tree with me and scraped me off when I was ten or so, and any animal with brains would have known that I was lighter than anyone else around, and if it got rid of me it would only mean more work. I live on the edge of the city, and my ranchette came with a two-stall stable and corral (courtesy of the previous owners who had two teenage daughters) but we don’t have a horse even though Marcy’s as horse-crazy as any other girl.

  Joe didn’t notice, but then Joe’s from Houston, and where he grew up he never saw a horse in real life till he moved away. For all Joe knows, horses might have eyes every color of the rainbow. Joe just nodded and swung the camcorder around as usual, and let me do the interview.

  Kelly kept chattering away, telling us about her friend named Charlene—she thought maybe we’d like a shot of both of them on their horses. Charlene had always ridden right behind her in the parade, she said. I guess Joe and I both were thinking the same thing: girls like Kelly had girlfriends with names like Charlene, and the girlfriends were always a lot less pretty but very energetic and sweet. Sweet, out here, means nothing to look at, and not enough spunk to leave. I tried not to let myself think about Marcy, my Marcy, who was born to be sweet…

  Charlene, Kelly went on, wrote poetry and painted pictures, and was going to be a famous writer someday. Joe and I looked at each other and managed not to sigh, and said, Sure, we’d be glad to meet her friend, but the folks back at the station couldn’t ever use all we’d shot. We always had that excuse. So Kelly rode off down the street, and for once, a back view looked good in the long lens. Joe caught some of it, just for us.

  When she came back, we had another shock. Charlene could have been Kelly’s twin for size and shape, with long curly black hair and a face out of an art book. Kelly was pretty—Kelly was typical golden-girl all-American long-legged gorgeous—but Charlene had bone to keep her beautiful for years, while Kelly would find out in her thirties that a round chin can double all too easily. Charlene had a black horse to match her hair, the blackest, shiniest horse I ever saw outside of a china figurine, not a brown hair on him. And green eyes.

  Now one green-eyed horse would be a marvel, the sort of thing that’s a freak. Two green-eyed horses— one black, and one palomino, and both with the prettiest girls I’d seen in years on their backs—that’s something else. The black horse gave me the same mischievous sidelong glance as the golden one had, and I noted that Charlene also wore wickedly roweled spurs and had one helluva long-shanked bit, like Kelly’s, in that beast’s mouth. I got a cold feeling on the back of my neck, and decided not to worry about it; it wasn’t my business, and the girls were easy to look at. That was our business.

  “Charlene used to lead the parade,” said Kelly, throwing her friend one of those smiles that cuts your hand if you touch it. “But then I got Sunny.”

  I think I’d have let them lead it together—it must be spectacular anyway,
with two gorgeous girls on those two handsome horses—for horses—and why not both in front? But Charlene was giving Kelly a smile to match the one she’d been given, and her voice, when she spoke, was husky and warm and in keeping with that face.

  “I didn’t want to hog it forever,” she said. “Besides, the Texas flag looks better with a black horse. And I know you’ll be just as generous when someone else is ready to take over.” Kelly smiled back, a little stiffly, and I figured they weren’t really friends. How could they be? Two pretty girls in such a small town are born rivals, and if they don’t know it, everyone makes it clear to them. About the time that one beat the other out for class sweetheart or most beautiful, friend had become an empty term. You don’t, right out loud, talk about enemies.

  When I got home, I told Marcy about the horses. Like so many girls her age, she thinks anything with four legs and a mane is wonderful. For years she’s been saving her allowance and birthday money to buy her own horse and take lessons at the stable up the road.

  “Could we go see them, Daddy?” I should have expected that. I looked at Denise. Mothers have rights, I’d learned, and besides we had planned to go to Hal’s poolside barbecue on Saturday. I had hoped Marcy would learn some things from his daughter. Suzi wasn’t a patch on those gorgeous girls with their horses, but she did have style, and Marcy was going to need all the help she could get.

  Denise gave me one of those inscrutable glances she’d been giving me lately and shrugged. “If you want…” She’d already told me she didn’t much like the party idea, back when I made the mistake of saying I thought Suzi was pretty sharp for a kid her age. Denise said yes, like a knife, and Marcy was a wonderful girl who needed to be recognized for what she was.

  We hadn’t exactly argued, but I’d felt uncomfortable. She should know I love Marcy more than anything else; I just want her to have a happy life, and pretty girls are happier. Denise should know that; she was a stunner.