Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  "Men ... my darling, you must know how to use them, you know," her mother would say, stroking her daughter's hands and laughing gently. "What are you thinking little one, you who see so much and say nothing?"

  She would search her daughter's face with her eyes and then pull the girl to her once more.

  "You and I, darling, we have each other. That is what is important. I do what I must do to make money for us. Your father is an idiot, so I must protect you. You must remember that whatever happens, we will be always be together."

  We will always be together.

  Now Josefina is gone and her father is broken and wordless. She saw him chase her mother into the street that night. He had found her sprawled asleep across the bed, the crimson shoes with their dagger-like heels still on her feet, a lover's note and enough money for a month's rent lying on the floor among the dust. Katerina saw him strike her mother's face with the back of his hand, a scarlet crescent against the white skin.

  Three weeks later Jakub is sitting at the wooden table in the hallway. He has enough money left to buy food for the evening meal, or to get drunk. He curses his wife and his silent daughter in her tiny room at the top of the house.

  Katerina is standing at the window which looks out over the roofs of the old town. If she leans out and looks to the left, she can see the top of the town hall tower from her window. As she waits, breath drawn in, she hears the astronomical clock striking the hour. She closes her eyes to sees the figure of Death pull the rope he holds in his right hand, while inverting the hourglass he holds in the other. Presently she feels warm dry lips against her cheek and turns to embrace her mother. Her room is empty but for her bed, a wooden chair and the closet in which she hangs her clothes. Josefina's voice curls into her mind like smoke; she is singing Gounod's Ave Maria, shivering the high notes like the topmost leaves of a silver birch.

  When all is silent in her head once more, Katerina puts her fingertips to her lips. They feel warm and slightly buzzy. When she opens her mouth, the music in her head begins again and she finds herself singing as effortlessly as sunlight pours through an open casement. Jakub raises his face from his hands and takes the steps two at a time, bursting into his daughter's room. He looks about wildly, expecting to see Josefina. But there is only Katerina standing by the window, her eyes startled, her fingertips once more trembling at her lips.

  The next day Jakub and Katerina walk to Charles Bridge, his hand gripping her elbow. He finds a place between the stalls selling city scenes, trinket boxes and cheap silver jewellery and places the cassette player between them on the wall. The girl shivers in the sharp wind and watches the clouds scudding across the face of the pale lemon sun as it rises above the spires and bell towers of the Old Town. A few yards away, an old man in a long, shabby overcoat is setting up a glass harmonica. His face is so thin and white it seems pared to the bone, yet he grins and cracks jokes, calling out to passersby. He pours water into each wine glass, each a little more than the last until he achieves a full three octave instrument.

  "Thought by some to be the medium through which the angels can sing directly to us, and used by the great Mesmer himself to condition patients before hypnosis, I give you, ladies and gentlemen ..."

  A pause, as he drips more water from a plastic can, and runs his moistened finger round the rim of several adjoining glasses to test the pitch. Each gives up its luminous golden tone like the dying breath of a song thrush.

  "... the original of the instrument known as the seraphim, the eumelia, the claviclindre ..."

  Jakub presses the button on the cassette player. The opening bars of Dido's lament sough from the machine. He takes his daughter's arm and turns her away from the wall to face the passing tourists. For a few seconds she looks confused, clutching her coat round her thin body. Then she begins to sing, her voice trembling silver above the glass harmonica's spun gold. As her voice grows in power, the small crowd which has gathered round the harmonica, turn to find out where the new sound is coming from. The old man glares irritably at Jakub as his carefully prepared audience drift the twenty feet up the bridge to listen to the shivering girl.

  And as his daughter sings, Jakub sees again that night when Josefina broke away from him, the weal on her face flaming red.Whore.

  Deep down, he had always known how she got her money. But he became tired of her taunts, the way she mocked his inability to sell his real paintings for money. He'd taken his shoes off at the front door so as not to wake her - and found her lying across the bed saturated by the body of another man. He stood over her, fists clenched, his face rigid with fury and grief. As if she sensed him - or perhaps she thought her lover was still there - she opened her eyes and - she smiled. He dragged her off the bed and out into the hallway where Katerina stood unnoticed at the top of the stairs. Then she mocked him, fanning his anger until he could bear it no longer and slapped her hard across the face. Still she smiled, laughed, in his face. He twisted her arm up her back until she cried out in pain. He pressed his mouth to her ear.

  "I'm going to kill you, do you hear?"

  She stepped backwards, grinding her stiletto heel into the toes of his left foot. Gasping with pain and surprise, he released her and she fled down the stairs and through the front door of the apartment.

  He chased her through the old town and under the gateway to the bridge. She turned then and called to him,

  "I curse you, little man. I'm sick of living like an animal with you."

  He was almost close enough to grab her shoulder, but as he reached out his arm, the broken cobble pierced the flesh of his foot.

  And Josefina runs to the wall and looks down at the water. She is a strong swimmer. If she can make him believe she has drowned, she can disappear and find somewhere new for her and Katerina to live. One of her lovers will help. She must do this for Katerina. In a few days she will watch for her daughter coming out of the apartment and take her to a new home. Safe, away from the murderous Jakub. She climbs on the wall and glances towards her husband who is getting to his feet. She steps into the air and, her scarlet dress flying around her body like wings, waits for the shock of the icy water.

  Katerina is singing a Hungarian folk song, the penultimate song in her mother's repertoire. Jakub rattles the already heavy bag as one by one, the people, as though hypnotised by his daughter's voice, drop into it whatever notes and coins they find in their pockets. She is staring straight ahead, her eyes lifeless and unfocussed, her mouth the only animated part of her body.

  The glass harmonica player can bear it no longer. The subtle tones he can tease out of his instrument are completely overwhelmed by the silvery flood of notes issuing from Katerina's mouth. He marches along the bridge and shouts to the people,

  "Why are you listening to this silly child? Can't you hear she has the voice of a common music hall singer? My glass harmonica is far more rare. You'll not see another like it in the city!"

  A few of the crowd turn their heads, irritated at the interruption, and then turn back again, listening even more intently. The old man is furious at being ignored, his eyes blazing black and furious in his bone-white face. He pushes his way through the crowd, shouldering people aside until he reaches the front of the semicircle which has formed around the girl. She has just begun her final song. Ave, Maria, gratia plena ...

  Jakub, moving among the people at the back of the crowd, hears a disturbance, but cannot see what is happening. By the time he has worked his way to the front, the old harmonica player has gone right up to Katerina and is shouting in her face. She seems unaware of his presence. Taking this for insolence, the old man slaps her sharply on the cheek. The people in the crowd gasp, but do nothing, remaining motionless as though they have lost the ability to move. Katerina's eyes, still unfocussed, fill with tears. Her mouth stops forming the words and hangs open slackly, a thin ribbon of drool stumbling down her chin. But the singing continues. Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mulieribus ... Enraged, the old man picks up the cassette player an
d throws it into the water.

  "See, it wasn't even her singing. It was a ..." The cassette player hits the water. And still the singing continues, rippling out of girl's gaping mouth. People begin to back away. Jakub goes over to his daughter and shakes her by the shoulders. She begins to vomit, but even her retching cannot drown out the singing which continues unabated from her lips. The harmonica player's eyes bulge almost out of his skull. He grabs Jakub by the sleeve.

  "She's a witch", he breathes. "A witch!"

  Abruptly the singing stops. Katerina turns and walks along the bridge, bumping into people and knocking over tourist stalls. Jakub follows, but is impeded by the street vendors who are trying to collect up their scattered wares. She climbs on the wall of the bridge between the statues of St Joseph and St Francis Xavier and steps out into air, the sunlight blazing a silvery corona round the black core of her descending body.

  When the river is dragged, they search for many hours before finding her among the foundations of an old building. She is entangled in the bones of a woman's decaying fish-nibbled corpse which floats upright, anchored by an ankle wedged in the masonry, scarlet dress flowing in tatters like weed in a mill race. The partially exposed bones of the mother's arms form a perfect, protective circle around her daughter's body.

  A Civilising Influence, by Gaye Jee

  Sunrise. Milky light spills over the lip of the cave. When it falls on my face I rise. The little one is still sleeping, her fist pressed against her cheek. I watch the dawn, my toes braced against the rock floor, poised above the vertical fall at the mouth of the cave, certain death if you do not know the narrow crumbling path.

  A golden mist hangs over the valley, smudging trees and hills, melting into the horizon, many, many days' walk away. Silence, except for the whisper of the wind stirring the leaves in the treetops far below me.

  The little one stirs, yawns, stretches her arms and legs. Her hair is thick and golden like the hazy sunlight and falls heavily to her narrow waist. The moon has been made and unmade many times since she came to me.

  We eat berries and some of the eggs the little one found yesterday, when I thought she'd left me. Just as I was trying to scent her on the breeze, I heard her call from the top branches of an oak tree. She came back to me then and showed me the eggs. She'd carried them down in the strange white pouch we'd found crumpled on the forest floor when we were hunting.

  I was smaller than the little one when Mama went away. I had only just learned which plants to eat and how to snare rabbits. She went to gather food one day and did not return. I waited until nightfall came for the third time, all the while calling and calling for her. Then I was alone. I took care when making a flame as Mama had shown me, for I knew it could burn and destroy as well as warm and give life. When I close my eyes and try to see her now, all I can remember is her eyes, the colour of young leaves, and the smooth river pebbles with holes in them which she had threaded on a strip of hide and tied round her ankle.

  On the walls of the cave are many figures. They are those who came before. Now I know they are the same as me, but at first I was not certain as they had shown themselves like sticks with arms and legs. They are hunting big animals that I have never seen and I think they died when the animals went away. At night the stick people would come to me out of the darkness. They whispered to me of sharpening stones to make a killing stick. Then they showed me handpictures deep in the cave where the sun only licks with its tongue before it sinks behind the trees in the valley. I put my palm against the handpictures and saw that my fingers matched with theirs.

  Before the little one came to me, I thought I was the last of my type. I watched the animals and plants and saw how they grew and lived together. Only I had no companions. My days were spent gathering food and breaking stones to make sharp edges for killing and cutting open fish or small animals. Bigger animals, those with tusks or claws, I let alone.

  I was in the forest collecting roots and plants on one of the days before she came to me. A great crashing tore the silence and many figures burst into the clearing. They had hairy faces, but the rest of their bodies were covered in the flimsy skins of some strange animal, not brown or black but the colours of flowers. In their arms they carried long sticks, but not taken from trees. They were shiny, like light glinting off water.

  They made a great roaring when they saw me. For a moment I thought they were they were like me, but then I saw their bodies were straight and hard, so I knew they were not. They circled me, slavering as they come nearer and nearer. I thought they are going to kill me for food and my head and chest pounded as if I had run a great distance. But they threw me down and each one in turn attacked me between the legs. I could not see what weapon they used. Afterwards I was alone and bleeding. I dragged myself back to the cave and slept until long after dawn the next day. When I woke I was weak and there was no water in the cave. It took me a long time to crawl down the path to the stream where I drank and slowly bathed my crushed body.

  It came to me that the attack had injured me so badly that my body had become sealed, for I no longer had blood when the new moon came. After many days I noticed my belly was becoming distended. I thought the poisons of my body were gathering there. As my body swelled, I thought I would die, but death did not come, so I continued to hunt and gather food. I got slower as my size increased.

  One morning I awoke to find I was lying in a pool of sharp smelling fluid. Then I was in great pain and knew the end was coming soon. I could not lie down, but paced the floor of the cave like a beast. The pain changed and suddenly my body was forcing me to squat down and expel the thing that had been growing inside me. For the first time I thought I might not die. Then, on the ground between my legs was a new creature, still attached to my body with a pulsing, twisted cord. I severed the cord with my teeth and looked at the new creature. It made a mewling sound. I picked it up and cleared away the bloody matter that was lying across its face. Then I realised what it was. Another me. A companion. A little one. I held it to my body and it nuzzled against the soft parts of my chest, its mouth searching. It found what it wanted and sucked fiercely and I was glad.

  This was long ago. The moon has been made and unmade many times and I have seen the little one learn to walk upright, to eat the things I bring her and to hunt for herself. She becomes more like me and now begins to take on my shape, bleeding with the full moon as I now do. We are complete.

  But now she hunts further and further away from the cave. Sometimes it is nearly dusk when she returns to me and I begin to fear she has gone forever. She brings back things that she finds. The strange white pouch, made from thin shiny stuff. It is big enough to carry two rabbits. On it are marks in many colours, brighter than I have ever seen. It is becoming torn now.

  And one day, a thin silvery blade, much finer than I could make out of stone. I think it is made from the same material as the shiny sticks carried by the hairy face creatures. I have sharpened the blade and use it to divide skin from flesh, flesh from bone.

  As the sun sinks into the trees, she sits at the mouth of the cave and gazes at the place where the distant line of the forest meets the sky. She scratches crowds of stick figures in the sandy floor of the cave, and presses her hands into the cold fire to blacken them so she can match the handpictures on the walls.

  I do not like to go far away from the cave but I am becoming fearful that she will leave me. Then, after many days of her returning after sunset, I follow her into the forest the next morning. We travel further and further from the safety of the cave until I can only follow or be lost. She moves silently, seeming to float over fallen logs and great boulders green with moss. She pauses in a place where the sun cuts through the leaves and lets the warmth flood onto her upturned face. As I stop, crouching behind a tree to conceal myself, my foot dislodges some loose soil to reveal a deep, narrow cleft between two rocks. I manage to throw my weight back onto my other foot just in time to avoid plunging into the crevice. As I look down I see, partl
y covered with soil and rotted leaves, a round skull and many other bleached white bones. The largest of these are long and straight like those I can feel in my legs. Then I see the lower part of one of the long bones is wedged between two sharp stones. I can see how it has become twisted and smashed with the effort of trying to free it. Scattered on the rocks around it is a rough circle of river smooth pebbles with holes in them. I do not move for a long time. Something inside me that had been silent for a long time begins to cry out in pain.

  Then I am aware that the little one has started to move again. She still does not know I am close behind her. Not a bird or animal is startled by us.

  She stops by the stream and drinks, then bathes among the swaying weed. I see her trying to catch fish in her hands as I have shown her. I crouch on a stony shelf jutting over the bank. I watch her just below me. She lies among the grass at the edge of the stream, snatching at butterflies, crunching up the ones she catches with her sharp little teeth.

  There is another watcher. From where I crouch I can see a figure approaching from upstream. It passes under my hiding place. It is wearing the same thin brightly coloured skins as those others, but its face is not hairy. It does not slaver. The little one springs to her feet and I think she is going to run. But she does not. The other sits a little distance away from her and she slowly squats down again.