FSF, August 2008

by Spilogale, Inc

  It was quite some time before he admitted to himself that it was not working. The children began to state the obvious long before he could bring himself to agree with them. Silencing his instrument, he again sat and pondered the possibilities.

  "Told you,” said the sourest of the voices.

  "Still, we had to try. There's been nothing else to try for the longest time."

  "How long have you been here?” Gorlen asked.

  "We don't know. How long is long? All we know is some have been here longer than others."

  "I was the first,” said the boy with the sour voice.

  "I was last,” said the smallest voice.

  "And you came here ... how?"

  "He promised us things."

  "He who?” Gorlen asked.

  "The one we're in, of course. Before he swallered us up, he asked us to sneak in and play with him. He said he had secret things for us. He said to tell no one."

  "He was clever. Teacher didn't know he could even speak! And he always waited till there was a stranger in town, so blame never fell on him."

  "You've put this all togther, have you?” Gorlen said.

  "What else have we to do but compare stories? Sit here in the dark and sulk and wait and talk and sometimes shout. We call and call but nobody hears us."

  Gorlen thought of the children's voices he heard, attributed to the ugly child's gift for mimicry—actually owed entirely to his diet.

  "And how do you live? What do you eat?"

  "Oh Gods no, please don't say it—"

  "Ugh, ew, no!"

  "Don't talk of it ... anything's better than—"

  "PIE!"

  He heard them gagging at the sound. “Huge chunks of it raining down on us ... halves of pies, hunks of sweetened sourstem, meringues and creams and pickles ... half-chewed, is the worst of it. But if you're hungry enough, you'll eat it."

  "I never thought I'd miss eating vegetables."

  "Me neither!"

  Gorlen thought of the voracious child, the huge mouth, and of the sound it made when it wailed for food. His thoughts turned to the first time he'd heard that horrid hunger, how it had swelled up and frightened off the sounds of other children while he was playing. And what was he playing? What had he done that caused the immense egglike being to drown them out, so they could no more hear the music than Gorlen could hear them?

  Then he remembered: The rondel. The round. The choir waiting for voices to join it.

  Perhaps it was not the music then.

  "I have another idea,” he said. “Something to try. Are you willing to try?"

  "Does it mean eating pie?"

  Gorlen chuckled. “Hardly.” And mentally banned himself from ever playing the “Pie-So-Long Song” for this crowd. “Do you know what a rondel is?"

  "Miss Chordacio taught us. She sings them. We know."

  "Can you name one you all know?"

  "A little while ago we heard one ... heard someone singing ... was that you?"

  "I believe it was,” Gorlen said. “I was singing for you, without knowing it. Would you like to sing that one?"

  "Oh, we started to, but then the sound went away, we couldn't hear a thing when he started howling to drown it out. It was all that terrible sound in here, and then when it finally quit we couldn't hear you anymore."

  "Well, you'll hear me now. What I want you to do is sing and not stop. I'll start you off, playing along with you, and then I'm going to do something else with my eduldamer. I want you to just listen to each other, keep the rondel going as long and as strong as you can, and ignore everything else. Do you think you can do that?"

  "We can! Miss taught us! We're good at it."

  "All right,” Gorlen said. “Now, here goes."

  He began to play the rondel he'd picked out earlier, weaving his voice through the tune. Voice by voice, the children joined him. This time, he felt the darkness solidify. He could hear their locations in the dark. Their own voices gave them a location, a bearing, by which they could make out their relation to the others. Without his even urging it, he could sense them moving closer to him, closer to each other, drawing in. The round of voices was sketching a tightening circle of beings as well. Voice by voice they drew themselves together, until he could feel them around him. He was at the center of the round, the voices swirling and spiraling, and it felt so solid he knew he could finally take his next step.

  He silenced the strings, and waited to make sure the children would not stop for even an instant. They hardly seemed to notice the eduldamer's absence. Gorlen twisted the pegs, loosening some wires, tightening others. When he thought he had gauged things just right, he struck the strings with the edge of his gargoyle hand.

  The racket cut through the seamless shifting beauty of the children's voice. It was a chilling, wracking sound, designed to set teeth on edge. The sort of noise that would make dogs howl.

  Dogs and other things.

  A slight tremor passed through the rondel, but it recovered instantly, even as Gorlen began to draw long screeching wails from his strings.

  A larger tremor, verging on violent, passed through whatever it was he sat upon. With a grin, he twisted a peg and plucked a triad of disharmonious wires. The sound was almost agony, even for him.

  Then came the howl.

  Light suddenly shone in on them, as if a boulder had rolled away from the mouth of a cave. It was pale, wavery, like the glow of a distant candle; but his eyes were so steeped in darkness that even the faint illumination felt like the beam of a lighthouse sweeping over them. He could see the faces of the children, dozens of them, caught and lit up, eyes gleaming, mouths open in song. They all saw each other at the same time, and with the recognition came movement. They had gathered in a circle, like a manifestation of the rondel, and now they moved together, all as one, toward the light.

  The glow began to dim, but Gorlen plucked the strings again and the brightness increased.

  Ahead of them, he saw the courtyard now. He saw a couple lamps held in wavering hands. He saw faces, looking this way, and heard muffled shrieks of disbelief.

  As they reached the threshold of the enormous howling mouth, more lamps were lit, and grieving parents, faced with hope, pushed forward in shock. The children could contain themselves no longer. As they dashed forward, they let off singing; the rondel collapsed. Gorlen watched them rush into welcoming arms, there in the school courtyard, and ceased plucking.

  The darkness sealed him in, the mouth nearly lopping him in two, but that he stumbled backward into darkness. His eduldamer fell from his hand. He saw it clatter onto the flagstones, just out of reach. Then the mouth sealed him in again.

  That was a terrible moment, and an endless wait that might have been merely seconds. He had but one voice after all. He could not find his way out, alone.

  But then the light came. Many hands, prying on the mouth, the adults of Childrun pushing bodily with all their strength, together opening a passage. And the voice of Ansylla, in her best stern schoolmarm intonation, ordering the disobedient child to “Spit it out right this instant!” There formed a tiny, niggardly passage through which he dragged himself.

  Gorlen lay in the square for a moment, hardly believing he was free until he saw Ansylla leaning over him. The children, reunited; parents still running weeping to reclaim their lost young; and variations of one particular conversation:

  "Come away now, love, Mummy will bake you a marvelous p—"

  "Please no! No, Momma! Never again!"

  "No more pie forever!"

  In the end, only one orphan lay unclaimed, although hardly forgotten.

  The child, so immense earlier that evening, was now a withered, flaccid sack of skin, hardly enough to fill a gentleman's cap. It resembled the shreds of a rubbery shroud. Gorlen thought he should be the one to go toward it, but as soon as he made a move in its direction, it drew itself across the courtyard like a shifting puddle. Disdaining to use the willow as a ladder, it wriggled its way up through cr
acks in the old wall and slithered over the top, heading toward whatever slimy rock-filled mountain fastness it had crawled out of.

  * * * *

  Ansylla Chordacio, her many ribbons fluttering, her pack of students accompanying them with great merriment and echoes of last night's rondel, kissed Gorlen on the cheek and linked her arm in his as they strolled out through the wide open gate. He would return the way he'd come and pick up another more promising path; that was the extent of his plan.

  "I assume you no longer wish me to present your vitae at any future institutions I may come across?"

  "Goodness no,” she said, smiling down at her children, as if they were all her own. “I have more than enough work here to keep me busy. This is the job I came for. Now I can finally do it. Thanks to you, Gorlen.” She kissed his other cheek. “The children and I and all of the villagers ... well, you will be long remembered in Glour, I can assure you."

  "Glour?” he said. “What is that?"

  She stared at him, baffled. “Why ... the village, of course. What did you think it was called?"

  In reply, Gorlen pointed toward the sign barely in sight down the path.

  "And what is that?"

  "The village marker...."

  "One moment.” She turned to the children. “You wait here, children. I will be right back."

  She walked with him down to the turning of the path, where he pointed to the sign that read CHILDRUN.

  "There,” he said. “The name of the village. I thought it might be a misspelling, but how do you get Glour out of that?"

  She laughed into her hand. “I've never seen that there before. Someone fleeing must have put it there. Look again, Mr. Fizzenwurth!"

  She leaned forward, tugging her crayon on the end of its lace, so that she could add two red corrective marks to the sign.

  "It's not misspelled,” she said, “simply poorly punctuated. Look."

  CHILD! RUN!

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Department: Books To Look For by Charles de Lint

  Mind the Gap by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, Bantam, 2008, $12.

  There's something I really enjoy about the conceit of hidden people living on the edge of our own world, secret either because we don't pay enough attention to notice them, or because they're so good at staying off our radar.

  It would seem that tiny people would have the easiest time staying hidden. As a kid I loved books like Mary Norton's The Borrowers series, or T. H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose with their diminutive characters living behind our baseboards or in secret cities. But there have been many books about full-sized hidden characters as well. In Christopher Fowler's Roofworld, the people live their lives never coming down to ground level. Neil Gaiman's characters have a whole other world below ground in Neverwhere.

  I suppose the reason those last two examples came to mind is because Christopher Golden's and Tim Lebbon's Mind the Gap is set in London, England, and the city's been on my mind since I finished reading the book. Their hidden world exists in abandoned subway stations, deep underground (hence the title; “Mind the gap” is something you hear over and over again as you get on and off subway cars in London).

  But while the city's the same, Golden and Lebbon have a whole other take from previous books touching the subject.

  It opens with Jasmine “Jazz” Towne coming home from school. Her paranoid mother is forever passing along dire warnings to her about not trusting anyone, and has instilled in her numerous warnings about what to do if things go wrong. What might go wrong, she never explains, but they live an odd secluded life, looked after by mysterious “Uncles” who pull up to their house in big black cars.

  Today Jazz has a weird premonition and instead of going directly into her house after school, she sneaks into the neighbor's place (he's off at work) and slips through a connecting passage that her mother had previously made as an escape route. (I told you she was paranoid, but—how does the saying go? Are you still paranoid when everybody is out to get you?)

  Slipping into her bedroom from an attic hatch, Jazz discovers that the previously benevolent Uncles have killed her mother and plan to kill her. Why? She doesn't know. All she can do is read the words her mother has written in her own blood on the floor: “Jazz hide forever."

  And then she flees.

  But she has nowhere to go. There is nowhere safe. Not until she stumbles on a bunch of kids living in an abandoned subway station, far below ground, led by a Fagin-like figure. But the kids aren't the only ones living down below. There are also ghosts—spectres that Jazz can see and hear, while the others can only sense them sometimes.

  Even though the community is Jazz's first taste of an extended family, all's not wonderful in the world below. The Uncles are still after her and they bring havoc in their wake. I loved the resolution of why Jazz is so important to so many people (it's not only the Uncles who want a piece of her), but I especially liked the choices she makes at the end and how it all plays out.

  Golden and Lebbon do a wonderful job with this book, pulling you in with a strong opening and a likable protagonist in Jazz, and then maintaining the story with an array of mysteries and puzzles, and a cast of engaging characters.

  This is the first book in a series, but the next will be in a different city, with different characters. On the strength of this opening gambit, I can't wait to read it.

  * * * *

  Heart of Stone by C. E. Murphy, Luna, 2007, $14.95.

  House of Cards by C. E. Murphy, Luna, 2008, $14.95.

  And speaking of hidden people living close to, but not part of, our world....

  I didn't even know that C. E. Murphy had a new series out until the second volume of it showed up in my P.O. box for review. After a quick trip to the bookstore for the first volume, I settled in to give it a try.

  I liked her Urban Shaman series a lot. I know I complained in previous columns that I wanted its lead character Joanne Walker (the police mechanic who turns out to also be a shaman) to just get over it: There's magic in your world. You've been given absolute proof. Deal with it.

  But I liked everything else about the series. The inventive storylines. Murphy's use of mythology and folktale. The mix of Native shamanism and Celtic folklore. The Seattle setting.

  The new series ups the ante and gets everything right.

  It's set in New York City, which if you don't live there (and maybe even if you do), seems the perfect place to have a bunch of secret Old Races living alongside humanity. There were five of them originally—dragons, djinns, gargoyles, vampires and selkies—and these days they are much diminished from their earlier numbers, especially the selkies. But they are still very much present.

  Stumbling into their world is a young black lawyer named Margrit Knight. (I mention her race, because it plays into her firsthand understanding of the racial dynamics between the Old Races, as well as how they feel towards humans.)

  What I like about Knight is that she's not a reactive character. She doesn't wait for things to happen to her; she goes out and makes them happen. It's also fun (and integral to the series) that she's a lawyer. She's the logical sort of person who doesn't believe in what can't be proved, but when the proof is offered, she doesn't waste any more time worrying about what's real and what isn't. She carries on.

  That said, she's often in far over her head, but rather than being overwhelmed, she puts on her “courtroom face” and works through the situation.

  In the first book that situation includes falling in love with Alban, a man who turns out to be a gargoyle and is wanted for murder. The main investigator on the case just happens to be Knight's ex, Tony Pulcella. Circumstantial evidence makes it look bad for Alban, but Knight is convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove it, a course of action that's complicated by having to keep secret exactly what Alban is, like the fact that he can fly and turns to stone at dawn.

  Before Knight knows it, by trying to help Alban, she not only puts the relationships of her human
life at risk, but she's also drawn into the complex jockeying for power and position among members of the other Old Races where a misstep can mean death.

  It all plays out like a breath of fresh air over the course of these two books, with a third title due for release in the fall.

  Murphy has a fine sense of pacing, her prose moves the story ahead, rather than simply calling attention to itself, and her dialogue crackles with true-to-life energy. But what I liked best about these books is the range of characters, and especially their range of emotion and motive. It's all shades of gray here, from the inhuman cast to the human.

  * * * *

  Jumper: Jumpscars by Nunzio Defilippis, Christina Weir, and Brian Hurtt, Oni Press, 2008, $14.95.

  Just an addendum here to previous reviews of Steven Gould's Jumper books. I finally saw the film based on them and while it's not nearly as good as the books, if you shut your mind off and go with the flow, it's at least entertaining. I don't think Gould did himself any favors by playing off the movie for his third book, rather than sticking to his own mythology (much like it annoyed me when David Morrell brought Rambo back from the dead for more books, without any explanation except to keep the movie franchise going), but that's not the point behind this.

  Oni Press recently put out a prequel to the movie that focuses on the Paladins, trying to make them more human, with understandable motives. (In Gould's series and the movies, Jumpers are teleporters, while the Paladins are a clandestine organization that's been butchering them for years with a religious fervor.) It'd be like telling a story to show how the SS in WWII were really just people who happened to have an agenda most of the world disagreed with.

  What really bugs me is that nowhere does it mention that this is based on work created by Gould, except—considering what a shambles they made of it—maybe that's a good thing for him.

  * * * *

  Material to be considered for review in this column should be sent to Charles de Lint, P. O. Box 9480, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3V2.