World Enough, and Time

by James Kahn

  Rose nodded patiently. Though she could read somewhat, she didn’t belong to the religion of Scribery, she had no real faith in the magic of writing. Still, she would do nothing now to quell Dicey’s hope.

  Dicey went on, “If Josh were here he could write some powerful lines. He can turn Word into Sword. He could read them all to sleep and we could walk out of here.”

  Rose smiled. “I don’t think Accidents care much for reading, sweetheart.”

  Dicey looked thoughtful. “Why are they doing this to us?”

  “Hard to know. But Accidents hate Humans, and that’s just the truth. Don’t know about these Vampires and the others. My mother used to talk about Vampires, back south. Hateful creatures. The Accidents look horrible, I know, but I just pity them. The Vampires, though …” She spit.

  “How come Accidents hate us so much?” Dicey wondered, passing her gaze over the varied countenances of the loathsome beasts.

  “Accidents used to be Humans, child. Long time ago, before there were Scribes, when Centaurs lived on their own continent, and Vampires never flew north of the Line. Used to be Human, but they drank a potion they thought would make them Gods, and that’s what they turned into. Now they hate the Humans who are left for not taking the potion.”

  “That’s not what it said in the book—” “Books don’t know everything, child—” “Don’t call me child,” Dicey pouted. “And books do, too, know everything. And the book I read said there were no such things as Accidents, they were just figments of imagination that we invented to punish ourselves for—”

  “Dicey, these Accidents are real. These are not imagined. Their smell alone ought to be enough to gag you.” That was the trouble with Scribery, as far as Rose was concerned—much of it was fairy tale, and so did not distinguish between history and metaphor. The young girl was silent. Two monstrous fiends near the wall squabbled over the remnants of an old man they were eating. Dicey looked like she might become hysterical. Rose turned her around by the shoulders.

  “Let me read your eyes,” she told the girl, to keep her occupied. She stared intensely into Dicey’s left eye. It was dark, opaque. Like an endless night.

  “What do you see?” asked Dicey.

  “Happiness and long life,” lied Rose. She could see nothing.

  The moon was a yellow ripe fruit hanging low in the sky, ready to burst. In the near distance the serene Pacific could be heard sighing. The wind slept. Josh and Beauty advanced on the brothel with exaggerated slowness, prolonging the last anticipatory moments to savor that mixture of fear and cunning that is the hunter’s lust.

  The brothel was a grand old wooden house, three stories high, with gables, extra wings, and garden cottages. A large plate-glass window faced out on the open field that fronted the building, and in the window burned three fat candles in clear red plastic jars. Candles could be seen flickering everywhere in the front room, making wild and changing forms out of the shadowy figures who moved within.

  Out back was an enormous barn; and a windmill, which normally generated some electricity for lights, refrigerator, games. But there was no storage battery, so there was only electricity when there was wind, and tonight the wind was resting. A quiet night.

  Josh climbed the five rickety stairs to the front door and knocked. Beauty waited behind, at the foot of the steps. The plan was to enter as patrons, do some discreet sniffing around; and take the wounded Accident alive, if possible—it had to lead the hunters to its accomplices, and to the orphan Humans.

  There were footfalls inside, and the door was opened. The old madam stood there in an evening gown, all four hundred pounds of her. Her face was painted in primary colors, and she wore a peacock-feather wig. Two big bouncers stood beside her and behind.

  The old madam looked at Josh, glanced briefly at Beauty behind him, then fixed her stare on the young Human. “Come on in, Trouble, we been waitin’ for ya.” Then, again to Josh, without looking at Beauty; “There’s stables out back for his kind.”

  Beauty’s nostrils flared, and he skittered back a few steps. Josh turned to him. “Forget it,” he said quietly. Then, louder: “The stable might be just the place you want.” He looked back and winked broadly at the madam. The madam smiled; she didn’t like horses, but she didn’t want trouble.

  Beauty didn’t take insults lightly, but he understood Joshua’s double meaning, and knew he was right; the creature was as likely in the stable as anywhere else. Besides, it would give him a chance to look over the grounds. He reared up once and cantered around the side of the house. Josh went In the front door.

  It looked even bigger on the inside than it did out front. A great room with a high-beamed ceiling spread off to the right, lit by a crystal chandelier, sparkling with candles. A player piano bobbed on madly in the corner. Off to the left a carpeted staircase curled upstairs, and beside it, in a side room with the door ajar, a group of six noisily played cards.

  Joshua entered the main room. The madam said, “You find somethin’ ya like, Trouble, an’ we’ll discuss it,” and then wandered off, leaving Josh on his own.

  The room was filled with buyers and sellers of every description, trysting quietly in the dark and fluid candlelight. In one corner a pale, gaunt man spoke in low tones to a female Vampire; she was naked, though her brown wings loosely encircled her; and as the man spoke, he slipped his hand down under the smooth, thin wing-skin and fondled the slope of her heavy breast. She threw back her head, let out a throaty chuckle, and a long white tooth glinted at the corner of her mouth.

  A Satyr lounged on the couch, goat-legs up on a table, a smile on his face, a young woman in his lap and another at his side. Their moist eyes were glazed, and their hands urgent in his fur; it was not immediately apparent whether the Satyr was buying or selling.

  Shadows danced in the stairwell.

  Near the dark side of the room two Hermaphrodites explored each other’s darker sides.

  Something like a Troll exposed his hump to someone with bulbous lips and a vacant stare; a black Cat lapped distractedly at the inner thigh of a frail, hairless woman wearing a black half-mask; a man whispered something in a woman’s ear.

  Josh scanned the group, but saw no sign of any Accidents. Where would it be? He thought of everything he’d ever read about them, but there had never been mention of Accidents going to brothels. The black Cat looked up, and her strange eyes met Joshua’s for a long moment; then she jumped down from her couch and disappeared. As Josh was about to try another room, a pretty girl walked up to him. She was no more than four feet tall, wearing a gauzy half-slip and a thin half-smile that was at once shy and sexy.

  “Looking for me?” she said. Her voice tinkled like fine crystal breaking in a muffled room.

  Josh began to shake his head, but stopped and decided to take a chance. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Meli,” she smiled. “Will you dance with me?”

  He smiled back. “So you’re a Dryad,” he nodded. Her name was a giveaway. “What’s a wood nymph like you doing in a …”

  Her face lit up like autumn fire. “I knew you were a hunter,” she exclaimed. “You know the woods, I could feel it.” She danced around him once, then pressed her diminutive body up to his. “Take me up to room 17,” she whispered gaily.

  Madam walked up. “You found somethin’ that suits ya, Trouble?”

  Josh dug into his belt and extracted one of the five gold pieces cached in the lining. The madam examined the coin in the candlelight, then tasted it. “This’ll buy you a lotto, trouble, boy,” she said, laughed uproariously, and swatted him on the bottom. He swatted her bottom right back, and she laughed even louder. Then Josh took Meli’s hand, and they went upstairs.

  Beauty trotted once around the buildings, but saw nothing of interest. Two small cabins, a watering hole, a medium-sized garden, a few goats and sheep. All very innocent.

  He hoped he could catch the Accident alone, without Josh. He could make the beast talk quickly, and he could kill
it quickly. Humans hesitated too often in these matters, they had too many motives, too many second thoughts. And Scribes were the worst of the lot.

  Beauty was glad to be a Centaur. Centaurs had the gift of balance—physically, spiritually, intellectually. They defined grace on the earth both in demeanor and being: their graceful behavior was well known, and their spirit was forever poised toward the patch of sky in the constellation Equus, where God was known to live. But most important for Beauty—was that Centaurs had a history.

  An ancient, royal history. It extended back thousands of years, to the birth of animals, to the earliest days after the continents congealed. A history of heroes, myths, principles, and—naturally—balance. It was a heritage weighted with responsibility. He wore the mantle proudly.

  Not like some of the other animals you saw crawling around. Animals you might see once and never see again. One-of-a-kind creatures, without a past or future, the dregs and the flotsam. Like the Accidents. The thought of the wretched beast brought Beauty’s senses back to the moment, to his resolve. He put his nose to the air. The wind was beginning to respire, but not really enough yet to catch the blades of the windmill behind the barn. He walked up to the stables and opened the door.

  Inside he was greeted sourly by an old man who took his piece of silver and told the Centaur he could have the use of any stall for an hour. Beauty thanked him curtly and started to look the place over.

  It was a big L-shaped structure with rough-hewn cubicles all along the walls. Paper and straw littered the dirt floor, and candles were set out every five feet or so. Three open windows near the ceiling provided the only ventilation, and allowed some thick waxy moonlight to pour in.

  Beauty walked a few steps and opened the door to the first stall. A pretty bay mare stood inside, her big brown eyes fearful. Beauty smiled and backed off. In the next stall a heavyset woman lay on her back in the hay, her teeth yellow, her dress open.

  Next was an Equiman girl—head and torso of a woman on the upright hind legs and tail of a horse, she was the sterile cross between a Centaur and a Human. Beauty’s child with Rose would have looked like this, and Beauty stared into the girl’s eyes from the depths of his own lost future. She clopped her hoof in the dirt, and tossed her hair, and half-laughed, half-whinnied, and made a kissing expression with her lips and rubbed her breasts and slapped her Horse-bottom. Beauty withdrew.

  Centaurs lolled in the next two stalls, aged and mangy, and then there was a roan stallion mounting a gray female Centaur, and then some empty stalls, a young boy, an old woman, a couple of ponies. No trace of the Accident.

  He went back into the stall with the young Equiman girl and closed the door.

  “Hi-i-i-i,” she whinnied, smoothing the hair under his flanks.

  He bent down and nuzzled her neck. “I just want some information,” he whispered.

  Josh closed the door to number 17, walked to the bed and sat down, while Meli danced over the floor like a leaf in a crosswind.

  “You always this happy?” Josh asked. He’d never heard of a Dryad living anywhere outside the woods.

  She flittered up to him and sat, feather-light, on his knee. “This is my room,” she confided; then jumped down to the floor and did a pirouette.

  “But why aren’t you out in the forest with—”

  She leapt up, pushed him back flat on the bed, and straddled his chest. “This is my bed,” she said quietly. He began to answer, but she placed two fingers on his lips. “My tree,” she said. “They cut down my tree to make the bed.” Joshua looked at her open face and nodded softly. Every nymph was said to have a tree that was her own, about which she had special feeling, of which she had special knowledge, with which she had special communion. Some said a Dryad withered when her tree died.

  He ran his hand along the hard ash bed frame. She got off his chest and lay beside him. “Hunters understand the trees,” she said distantly, hugged him, stroked his chest.

  “And you understand losing something dear,” he responded. He needed to enlist her aid, and saw this immediately as a way of securing her empathy. She brought her head up, nibbled the side of his chest. He felt vaguely sleepy. “I’ve lost something,” he continued, “something close to me, like your tree.”

  “How awful,” she declared somberly.

  “It was stolen, too. Taken from me in the night.” He forced himself not to think directly of Dicey; it was far too painful, and he needed to keep cool. Meli was responding, though, to Joshua’s repressed feelings; and to her own, clearly felt: tears filled her eyes.

  “What was it?” she asked timidly, afraid to hear his answer, trying to erase the image of her tree being cut.

  “My lover,” he whispered. “My bride.” He held his mouth firmly closed.

  “How awful,” she repeated. She smoothed the wrinkles from his brow with her fingertips. “Who stole her? Do you know the man?”

  Mercifully, he forced his thoughts again on to his revenge, off his pain. “The thing that did it is here,” he replied. “Hiding. Meli, you must help me find him.”

  She was frightened, suddenly, and uncertain. A dozen fears assaulted her at once, all meeting at her lost tree, her lost Life. “But what if she’s dead?” she cried.

  Josh refused to entertain this thought—they hadn’t kidnapped Dicey just to kill her. “No,” he said categorically. “Besides … we’re Scribes.”

  Meli looked partially relieved, partially confused. “I met a Scribe once,” she nodded. Then: “What’s a Scribe?”

  “We read and write,” he began. “We believe in the power of the written word. We learn things in books. We believe the Word is God. Words tell us everything. If we learn something important, we set it down in writing, and then it lives forever, and other Scribes can read it in a thousand years and know it the same as we do.” He paused. “That’s why Dicey won’t die. Because her name is written. Even if her body is destroyed, I can lay down her life in scripture, and she’ll live as long as the words, and every time her words are read by another Scribe, she’ll feel joyful.”

  “That’s beautiful,” said Meli. The wind outside rose a bit, rattled the window. The lights in the room went on dimly for a moment, as the windmill outside began to generate some electricity; but then the wind subsided, and the lights flickered out. The candles on the table continued to glow warmly.

  The sleepiness Josh had felt earlier returned. He forced himself not to yawn. Meli sat up, put her slight hand on his breast. “Will you do something for me?” her voice quivered. “Will you write the name of my tree?”

  Josh was moved. He got up, walked over to the table and sat down. He picked a piece of bramble out of his boot, held it to the candle flame until it started to burn, and then dropped it into a little cup he found on the windowsill. When the bramble had burned itself out in the cup, Joshua stuck his thumb down onto it and crushed it into soot. His flesh was pricked in the process, and two or three drops of blood fell into the cup. Finally, he spit into the mixture of blood and charcoal dust. Meli watched the whole thing with mixed wonder and doubt.

  Josh tore a piece of dirty white sheet off the bed and laid it flat on the table. He took his quill out of his boot, dipped it into the makeshift inkwell, and wrote in careful block letters on the small cloth: MELIAE. Then he handed it to her.

  She stared at it lovingly, turning it this way and that, holding it up to the light, smelling it, touching it. It made her so happy, Josh tore off another piece of sheet, and wrote on it in flowing script: Meli. He handed this second scrap to her, and said, “This is your name.”

  She held it gingerly, lest it break. The wind whipped up the lights once more, then let them down slowly. Muffled laughter floated up from the downstairs. Meli pressed the two cloths gently together, then looked back at Josh. “I’ll help you find your tree,” she said. “What do the thieves look like?”

  Back to the hunt. Josh felt his muscles tauten once more. “One is an Accident,” he said, “and he’s wounded. I kn
ow he’s here somewhere. He was with a Griffin and a Vampire earlier, but they split up. He might be meeting them, though, here or somewhere else.”

  She scrunched up her face. “I haven’t seen any Accidents tonight.”

  Josh found himself suddenly profoundly sleepy. He had trouble keeping his eyes open, and sat down on the bed.

  Meli went on. “But there was a Vampire and a Griffin here before, and just waiting around, too, they didn’t want to dance or anything …”

  The press of sleep became overpowering, and Josh closed his eyes. He felt vertiginous. Meli’s voice was getting farther and farther away.

  “… but they said they couldn’t wait long, so madam sent them down to room …”

  Everything faded into blackness, without sound, without direction, without substance. And at the end of the blackness, an intensely bright, infinitely distant spot of light. Distant, but somehow palpable, like the memory of perfume. The light exerted light-pressure, only it was a negative pressure, a kind of subtle suction, teasing Joshua through the endlessly unfolding black ether …

  Beauty reached into his quiver, pulled two silver coins out of the pouch, and handed them to the Equiman whore. She took the money and tied it into a loop in her tail.

  “Now tell me where the Accident is,” said Beauty.

  She put her finger to her lips and motioned him in closer. He leaned his head down to hers, put his ear to her mouth. With an unexpectedly swift stroke, she brought a two-foot plank down on the side of his head. He heard rather than felt the blow. Then in the space of a moment after the sound of the whok, he felt surprise, anger, dizziness, and fear. He turned and stumbled out the door of the stall.

  She followed him, yelling. “Dirty bounty killer, filthy scummy parasite,” she screamed, whacking him about the loins.

  He stumbled and got up. Animals were coming out of their stalls to watch. Beauty felt a rivulet of warm, thick blood begin to flow down the side of his face. He saw the old man approaching out of the corner of his eye, and he reared up to defend himself. The old man walked right past him, though, grabbed the raging Equiman by the wrist, and knocked her unconscious with one gentle, reluctant punch.