Aeon Ten

by Aeon Authors

  One of the six young women—he thinks of them as maidens—sees him and her song becomes a scream. The others follow suit, rushing inward toward the center, surrounding the torchless woman, attendants protecting their mistress. Perhaps they hope to hide her nakedness with their bodies or catch the bullet intended for her, but either goal is futile. The woman at the center is head and shoulders taller than any of the others.

  For her part she seems thoroughly unconcerned. Her pale eyes take him in, his nakedness, his raised gun. Abruptly she laughs a laugh that echoes and shakes the cave's stony vault, a laugh to split the very vault of the universe in two and stop all the clocks ticking in a different world.

  Acton feels a spike of blue-white light driven into his forehead, then blackness and falling, falling inside himself—What is past is present elsewhere, a soft-spoken female voice says inside his head. What is future is present elsewhere. You are going elsewhere.

  —toward infinity, where starlight makes ringing music on the gong of the atmosphere. The mind of the world falling into his mind. With golden oars of joyful wisdom rowing a canal of stars. Shooting stars fish flash great gold sword slashes sheathing themselves in an unbounded scabbard of black velvet. Toothed whales of light giant squid of darkness struggling out of view in deep luminous skies. The galaxies themselves mere oases of light in vast deserts of darkness. The further he goes from himself the closer he comes to himself. The entirety of the universe more intimate to him than he is to himself. The eye with which he sees infinity the eye with which infinity sees him.

  —toward eternity, where light lets there be, light from excess of dark, drops and puddles and storms of light blowing and booming outward. Planets wandering not far from their primary's gravity attraction loving embrace. Life in contravention of the law of the second. The nightmare hallucination of evolution of human history of the bleeding the broken the buried beneath brick and wood and stone of refugees wretchedly fleeing destruction like salamanders writhing out of the fire then Project Medusa Blue but too late the nightmare again and again of the Iron Man topping his brazen whore Liberty again and again the lovers beneath an infernally red and black sky coupling endlessly atop a bed of skulls in a field of skeletons a vast plain of corpses and decay stretching to every denuded horizon ghost people in ghost buildings diaphanous dissolving disappearing ghosts watching ghost shadows watching shadows in every dying room swarms of ghosts like dust devils of ashes everywhere ghost bees in their high hives their ghostly skyscrapers dependent for hire or fire on the ghostly business of empire fires swallowing fires ashes swallowing ashes moths butterflies to flames in buildings inevitably ruins before building a fire building a stack of ashes forever forever even the sun only a light inevitably blinking out all the stars falling going out like cigarettes tossed from passing starships to the eye of eternity the eye with which he sees eternity the eye with which eternity sees him.

  Inward, inward, outward, outward. The golden eye of the amphibian seeing two worlds, the eye of the salamander writhing out of the fires of space and time. The eye at the center of the storm, the eye above the mortal two at the limit of the divine—and still further— He wakes at last to early morning sunlight and the sound of distant flamethrowers. Dalke and the men burning bodies. Dew lingers on his cheek, though his gun is gone. He should be running for his armor, back in uniform, back beneath the mask, but a luxurious languor still fills his senses. He is in no hurry. The woman—Diana Gartner, Witch, Starburst, whatever—is gone, along with her attendants. It is the first of November, the cave entrance is dark, and in the daylight world no trace remains of the night before.

  But now he remembers why Giordano Bruno was burned alive. His religious experience was the reflection of the universe within his own memory, proof that the mind itself is universal and divine. He taught the art of memory, the art of mind, the heresy that the kingdom of God, the literal universe, is within each and all. He taught that to kill a person is to kill a universe—and for this he had to die.

  He begins walking downstream again. Somewhere along the leaf-strewn gorge he hears his helmet battlecom squawktalking, breaking the morning quiet, echoing among the rhyolite walls. Over the tree-lined slopes he sees Lieutenant Dalke and Private Reese coming in over the trees.

  "Look!” he hears Dalke say over the com. “A heretic! And naked at that!"

  "Let's burn the faggot, Lieutenant!” Splitting up to flank him, they fly down into the gorge and he dives running into the thickets beside the stream. Over the abandoned helmet he hears their search for him as he evades, anticipates their directions, reacts to their crosstalk. They set fire to the brush at the mouth of the gorge. He starts following a line of brush and low trees still in morning shadow to where the brushline goes up and over a ridge, into the next drainage and away. A gamble; out of this gorge he will no longer be able to hear the battlecom from the discarded helmet.

  His body surges pulses pounds through the brush and low trees, dodging and running, unencumbered by superhuman armor. He never knew he was capable of this. Branches slash him, thorns tear him, but he does not slacken his pace. It would be so easy to stand up before Dalke and Reese, shout “Hey! It's me! Your superior officer!” But he knows what would happen then. They cannot hear him—their smart armor screens it out. Even if they could, they'd never expect to see their Captain naked, they'd probably gun him down before he had a chance to speak.

  At some level, too, he suspects the truth: he is a heretic now. He can never go back. He is almost to the ridge. He needs only cross a small clearing and he'll be up and over—Dalke spots him at the top of the ridge, lays down a barrage. A round takes him in the shoulder and he falls plunging tumbling bouncing bonebreaking off tree trunks to the floor of the otherside drainage. Dazed, bleeding, unable to stand, much less walk, he sprawls in a leaf-strewn gully.

  Dalke lands in a whirlwind of leaves. “Damn it, Lieutenant!” Acton cries out painfully over the scraping of fractured ribs. “Can't you see it's me?"

  Slowly, Dalke raises the visor on his helmet.

  "Thank God! That's right, Lieutenant—it's me. Will Acton. Your Captain."

  Dalke stares at him carefully.

  "No,” he says. “You're not the Captain. You're a heretic."

  Dalke steps back, slapping down his visor. All time and space become one time and space. They are Brutus and Caesar, Judas and Jesus, Cortes and Montezuma, Mocenigo and Bruno. Infinite worlds in infinite space infinitely one. Barefooted and garbed in a robe embroidered with devils and flames, an exotic robe, an Aztec robe, Bruno steps toward the flames. Dalke presses a stud. A stream of fire surges out. Acton sees only a stream of butterflies and moths, floating toward him forever.

  When Reese lands he see Dalke standing beside a corpse-shaped mound of ashes. Small fires still smolder among the surrounding leaves.

  "Another starry-eyed heretic bites it, eh Lieutenant?"

  "Yes, Private.” Dalke seems subdued. “Let's find the Captain and report this. He of all people would certainly want to know."

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  The Scarecrow's Bride by Marina Fitch

  "The Scarecrow's Bride” first appeared in Pulphouse, the Hardback Magazine Issue 10, Winter 1991.

  Author's Note: “Sometimes a song overwhelms me, creates a yearning that removes me from the world. That doesn't begin to explain the feeling—words never will. Often these are songs that are beautiful in and of themselves, but that I find much more powerful because of the choice of musicians, instruments and approach. “The Scarecrow,” sung by June Tabor on her Abyssinians album, is one such song.

  It was years before I attempted to write about the images and emotions this song inspired in me. The story came slowly at first, then I met someone who helped me understand the heart of what I had written. After tha
t it was easy."

  EMMA GREY CAME TO ME in spring when the Earth still bore the scars of the winter storms. Early flowers—clover, milkmaids, poppies—bent beneath the wind as the old woman skirted patches of snow. Mother and I watched from the window. “You will be married in a week's time,” she said.

  I smiled, remembering the promise Gerard Malins made to me in the woods: to marry me despite my withered leg. I hugged the crutch to my side. “Is that why Emma comes?” I said. “Or will Ger ask me himself?"

  Mother turned from me. “He will not,” she said. “You are to be the scarecrow's bride.” I grasped my crutch tighter. In a village of nearly four hundred, surely there was someone else. “But Tess Dunne's Mary is blind and Ginny Frye's Anne has one arm—"

  Outside, footsteps shuffled to a halt on the doorstep. “Your father and I couldn't offer a dowry rich enough to please Ger Malins’ parents. A man wants money, they said, or a woman who can work beside him in the fields."

  Mother opened the door. A breeze preceded the old woman, a breeze that tasted of honey and rainwater. Emma tucked a lock of white hair beneath the wrap of her shawl. The strand tumbled free, curling along her plump, florid cheek. With a grunt, she clutched the doorjamb and pulled herself inside.

  She blinked, peering at Mother through milky eyes. “Mollie Scarecrow died last night,” Emma said. Then she turned to me.

  * * * *

  Dressed in white, my hair garlanded with apple blossoms and red poppies, I rode the bridal cart through town. The scarecrow rode beside me, its button eyes agleam with sunlight as its head listed to and fro. Its right arm flopped onto my good leg, its gloved fingers splayed across my thigh. I lifted its arm by the sleeve and set its hand in its own lap.

  The jingle of the bells that hung from the horse's bridle tolled the passing of my dreams: never a home nor children, never a man to love me. Near the village green, I saw Ger Malins with a girl of fourteen, a girl whole of limb. Ger looked away as we jangled past, the scarecrow and I; he stepped away from the girl. My eyes stung with unshed tears. When another jolt threw the scarecrow's hand across my thigh, I let it stay.

  "Hurry,” I whispered to the three men leading the horse, but they had their backs to me. We clattered on, leaving the village behind. At a lone cottage at the far edge of the fields, we stopped.

  Squat and white, the house crouched before the field and sky, its thatched roof darker than the rich, sprouted earth. A tangle of vine clung to one wall. I twisted the folds of my white dress. This forlorn cottage was no longer Mollie Scarecrow's. It was mine.

  While the other man reached for the scarecrow, Thomas Halpern helped me from the cart. A stout middle-aged man with a nimbus of white-blond hair, he gestured for me to lean forward. His hands locked around my waist and he lifted me from the seat. He stroked the small of my back with his fingertips. I trembled, imagining those hands caressing my cheek, my shoulders, my breasts. I grasped his arms. He looked down at me and the arch smile faded from his lips. Pity muted his eyes. He set me down, then reached for my crutch and handed it to me. I tucked it beneath my arm. Lifting my chin that I might appear tall and straight, I nodded to him. “Thank you,” I said.

  He looked away. “Not at all."

  I turned and walked up the path.

  Emma Grey and Thomas Halpern's wife, Nora, met me at the door. Nora bobbed her fair head, blinking her tiny eyes so that she looked like a hare. I brushed past her without a word. A table stood at the window, set with a vase of milkmaids and blue-eyed grass. At the hearth, a fire flickered red and inviting, its flames curled along the sides of an iron pot. A bed nestled against the far wall, the bedclothes folded back, dried rose petals scattered across the pillow. I pressed my hand into the pillow. The crushed petals burst with scent. “Welcome home,” Emma said.

  I drew back my hand and went to the window. In the field, the men clamored around the pole, pushing and pulling the new scarecrow into place. Emma said, “The pantry is well-stocked. You won't want for anything. Someone will stop in each day to see to your needs."

  The men bound the scarecrow's shoulders to a crossbar so that his arms hung from the elbows as if broken. “My needs?” I said. “And will you send a young man?"

  The wind caught the scarecrow's head and flung it to one side. The men laughed. “To see to your material needs,” Nora said. “And what would you want with a man? Someone to scold you and pull at you, to wink at the girls behind your back?"

  There were nights of pain in Nora's eyes. I looked away.

  "You will have many husbands, Chloe Scarecrow,” Emma said. “A new one each year who requires only that you mend his clothes when the birds pluck at them or the winds tear at them."

  The men stepped back from the pole. “And after this one,” Emma said, “each will be your own creation."

  * * * *

  The field flourished under my care of the scarecrow. Early on, I learned how little attention the straw man required: a patch here, another there, a bit of straw to plump its arms. Whenever a rip appeared, I had but to ask the men to lower the scarecrow from the pole for an hour or two. During the day, people worked within shouting distance and many stopped by briefly to gossip. Even Ger stopped by once or twice. Perhaps, I prayed, my residence here would be a short one. But in the dark hours of the night, with nothing but the wind for conversation, I thought about Mollie Scarecrow.

  Mollie Scarecrow was a hunchback with a club foot. As children, we sang about her, about how no man would have her. She sat alone at night, the old people said, and patched her husband's ragged clothes. Each winter she asked for clothing, scraps of cloth and straw, and each spring she presented the new scarecrow to the people of the village. By creating and ensuring the life of the scarecrow, she ensured the fertility of the fields.

  On celebration and feast days, someone drove the ceremonial cart to fetch Mollie Scarecrow for the festivities. Just as her husband's watchful presence blessed the fields, so her presence assured the fruitfulness of a marriage or promised a baby long life. Each year she grew quieter and more bitter, until at last she refused to come. Brides and mothers went to her to ask her blessing, many returning to comment on her aloofness. People shook their heads, saying, “Why is she so ungrateful? She wants for nothing. She is well provided for."

  As was I. But I wanted to do more than watch over the village without taking part.

  * * * *

  The air smelled of rich summer must. Sunlight baked the soil, drying it so that it crumbled beneath my hands. I pried a weed from the dirt and set the plant on the cloth at my side.

  "A lovely garden, Chloe Scarecrow,” someone said.

  I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked up into the face of Thomas Halpern. “Thank you,” I said. “It's a small garden, but it could well feed two."

  Thomas squatted beside me. “Feed them and satisfy them. You're a clever woman, Chloe Scarecrow."

  His arm brushed mine as he reached across me to pluck a weed from a row of onions. He drew his hand back slowly, his fingers straying along my arm. “Perhaps you can contribute something to the wedding feast,” he said. “No doubt you will be there to bless the marriage."

  My heart stilled. “And who is to be married?"

  "Why, Ger Malins, in three weeks’ time."

  The breath went out of me. I gazed at the garden, at the vegetables and herbs that sprouted along the widely-spaced, mounded rows. The garden bore far too much food for one, far too little for a growing family. I raised a fisted hand. My knuckles shone white; dirt squeezed through my fingers. I looked out across the field of corn and glared at the scarecrow, grown thin in the summer breeze. It flapped and shuddered in the wind, its head lolling back, pinned between the pole and crossbar. I flung the dirt aside and snatched at my crutch. I pulled myself to my feet.

  "You will go to the wedding?” Thomas said, rising.

  My jaw ached as I gritted my teeth. “I will. It's is my duty."

  "I can come for you, if you like,” he said. He
touched my cheek.

  "I would not,” I said, stepping back. I pivoted on my crutch and, with one last hateful glance at the scarecrow, retreated to the cottage.

  * * * *

  Two nights before Ger Malins’ wedding, Mother came to me. She sat across from me, stirring her tea and blowing on it, stirring it again. “Will you go to the wedding?” she said.

  I pushed my cup aside. “I will."

  "It is your duty,” she said, “as the scarecrow's wife."

  "Mother, I will go."

  "I know it will be hard for you to bless Ger Malins and his bride,” Mother said. “But you must go. You must."

  I took her hand. “Mother—"

  She started, turning from the window with a haunted look. “Your father and I didn't wait. He said nothing would come of it. He promised."

  I let go of her hand. “Didn't wait?"

  "She was ill, Mollie Scarecrow was ill, on our wedding day. Everyone said we should wait until she was well enough to come, but your father said no. And when I conceived a month later, he claimed Mollie Scarecrow had no more power than a fly in a web. We never asked her to bless you."

  A chill invaded my very marrow. “How could you—"

  "You were a fine, healthy baby,” she said. Her voice faded to a whisper. “My only baby.

  "You grew strong ... Then the illness came."

  Mother stared out into the night. “You must go."

  She rose, jarring the table. Both cups spilled. She pulled her shawl from the peg by the door and wrapped it about her. With her back to me, she said, “I must go."