Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies

by Martin H. Greenberg

  5/5/1998—¼/2008

  HER BLACK MOOD

  By Brenda Cooper

  Brenda Cooper has published fiction in Nature, Analog, Oceans of the Mind, Strange Horizons, the anthologies Sun in Glory; Maiden, Matron, Crone; Time After Time, and more. Brenda’s collaborative fiction with Larry Niven has appeared in Analog and Asimov’s. She and Larry have a collaborative novel, Building Harlequin’s Moon, available now in bookstores. Her solo novel, The Silver Ship and the Sea, was released in 2007. Brenda lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her partner Toni, Toni’s daughter Katie, a border collie, and a golden retriever. By day, she is the city of Kirkland’s CIO, and at night and in the early morning hours, she’s a futurist and writer. So she’s trying to both save and entertain the world, with sometimes comical results as the two activities collide and, sometimes, blend. Neither, of course, is entirely possible.

  The doorway to the High Hills exists within a waterfall that exists within an arts festival that exists in Laguna Beach, California, once every summer. Many of my stories have passed through this doorway. I hope you enjoy this one.

  Summer sun beat down on Carly, washing out her skin and the sawdust under her feet and dulling the bright green and purple glazes on her mother’s pottery. The air had become a veil of heat-shimmer between herself and the path she squinted down.

  Nothing but tourists in bright shorts with sweaty faces. Of course, the tourists were welcome for their wallets. But she wanted her mom. Or Marla the women’s shelter lady or Jack the handyman or anyone else she knew, for that matter. It was a drag to be stuck in the booth; she had to post a sign, carry the cashbox, and worry the whole time if she even went to the bathroom. She dug her toes into the hot sawdust and wiped sweat from her face and sighed, still looking.

  If only she could just leave. She’d met some girls down on Main Beach, runaways living on the lawn by the boardwalk all day, flirting and laughing. She’d even made friends with one, a tall Latina girl named Toy who came by the booth once in a while. Maybe Toy would come today, and her mom wouldn’t get drunk until after the festival closed, and Carly could go to the beach with Toy and ask her and her friends some of the thousand questions she had. Where did they sleep? How did they eat? Where did they go when they left Laguna Beach after the festival?

  It would be fun to go with them, wherever they went. Not that she would. She picked up a rag and rubbed the sawdust leavings from the platters and bowls on the lower shelves, still watching.

  There. Finally. Not Toy, but her mom. Hobbling up the ever-so-slight hill between the entrance wall and their booth, walking even slower than the tourists, as if she were fifty instead of thirty-five. When her mom finally stood inside the booth, she smelled of this morning’s whiskied coffee and the two or three bottles of cheap wine from the night before. Now that she was here, it was hard for Carly to remember why she’d wanted her here, even though she had. Carly mumbled, “Good morning.”

  Her mom’s eyes fastened on Carly’s, and a thin smile touched her lips and cheeks, making her look almost healthy for a moment. “How’s it going?”

  Her words slurred a little. Not enough for a customer or a cop to recognize, but Carly heard it. Damn her mom, anyway. “It’s almost three o’clock, Mom. I’m hungry.”

  The older woman shoved her fist into her pocket as if there might be money there.

  There wasn’t, of course. She glanced at the cashbox. “How’d we do so far?”

  Carly looked away, barely keeping her voice even. “I did okay. I took in sixty-four dollars so far, even in the heat. Mostly mugs, but also the purple dragon platter.” And another twenty-five I hid against the winter because you won’t. But she didn’t say that since then the twenty-five would disappear.

  “So take four dollars and go get lunch.”

  Anger licked up Carly’s spine and flushed her face. “Four dollars? That’s a stale hot dog from Mumbly Pete’s. I opened six hours ago. And I get seventy-five cents an hour?”

  “C’mon Carly. You know we have expenses.”

  She’d hoped so hard this winter. After Carly’d started sleeping in the women’s shelter on bad nights, her mom had gotten worse. Then one morning Carly found her in tears, slumped over the rickety fake-wood kitchen table in their studio. She’d raised her head and sworn she’d become a good mom. She’d pinky-sworn to stop drinking. She signed up for a regular twelve-step program and quit drinking for a full month. Even though the month had ended with a binge, it had been better for a while. It really had.

  But not anymore.

  A tear pulled itself into shape in the corner of Carly’s eye, and she turned away so it wouldn’t drive her mom to yet another drink. Carly reached into the cashbox and took out a twenty. That would buy lunch. There was a thin back entrance between their booth and the jewelry booth that faced toward the aisle behind them, and Carly was skinny enough to slide through a place her mom couldn’t follow.

  The tear slid down her cheek and another one gathered, and she licked it coming down, a trick she’d taught herself as a kid. If you catch a tear before it falls, you can stop crying. Only this time, once she licked off the tear, it became an anger-stone in her belly.

  Damn.

  How come her mom couldn’t get her shit together? Marla and everybody else told Carly it wasn’t about her, but even if it wasn’t because of her, Carly should be able to help her mom. Except she never could.

  The twenty-dollar bill in her pocket seemed as heavy as the tear-stone in her belly. She’d never stolen from their kitty before unless it was to save money to buy food in the winter, when there was no place to sell her mom’s pottery. She could take it back—she would take it back—but that didn’t take away the fact that she’d stolen it. One of the buskers or mummers would have shared food or a few dollars with her; they were always willing. Anyway, she should have done something other than stealing the twenty.

  She built up enough mad at herself and her mom that the tears stayed away as she stalked though the crowd.

  Little kids squealed and splashed in the pool in front of the waterfall door. A ragged red towel had been draped over the NO WADING sign. Even the moms, who pretended they were chasing children, cooled their feet in the shallow pond while looking guilty. Carly waded right through them, managing not to step on anyone, walking into the rock wall so fast she didn’t have any time for doubt.

  That was the only way she could go through this year. Running at the wall and trusting that the door didn’t dare refuse her. Last year had been easy, and the first year had been cake, as if the stone melted for her. But then, she’d been scared instead of mad. Jack had told her the trouble was because now she was mad instead of hurt, and the magic of the door didn’t like anger. But how was she supposed to stop being mad? Her mom was falling apart. Her grades sucked from worry, and she never knew where she was sleeping for sure till she saw how drunk her mom was any given night. Maybe by next year, she’d be so mad she wouldn’t be able to come at all.

  But it worked now. On the far side, she realized she’d been holding her breath. She stopped, feet planted on the hard dirt, back against the stone she’d just walked through, and inhaled the fresh air of the High Hills. The place on the far side of the waterfall door.

  Maybe she should just stay here. The faintest whiff of an ocean breeze licked her face and sent her salt and seaweed and the thin distant cry of gulls. Her stomach rumbled. She’d forgotten to stop and buy lunch. Stupid. Well, it was still lunchtime over here. Time in the High Hills was behind time in the modern world, the real world. Sometimes Gisele knew she was coming and brought extra.

  Overhead, the sky shone pale summer-blue, but to the west, white and gray clouds billowed over the ocean. The feel of rain prickled the skin on Carly’s bare arms. Just downhill, the familiar meadow was summer-brown, thirsting for the storm, and sere brown hills dotted with scrub oak surrounded her on all sides. A clutch of houses nestled behind the westernmost oak grove, all of the houses and most of the trees invi
sible from here but just ten minutes away on foot. She stalked across a wooden bridge over a thin stream that meandered through the meadow and walked down the path on the far side. The High Hills didn’t lighten her mood any, nor did the first fat drops of warm rain hitting her shoulders and nose.

  As if the clouds had warned everyone inside, Carly didn’t pass a soul before getting to Gisele’s door. She didn’t knock—why knock when Gisele always knew when she was coming? She found her mentor bent over, carving a fist-sized fish, her gnarled hands moving surely under the bright battery-operated desk lamp Carly’d brought over for her last summer. Gisele’s thin gray hair tumbled over a faded green shawl draped over her shoulders. An old ginger tabby, Tab, curled on the woodpile behind the old woman, and bestirred herself long enough to lift her heavy head and drop it back to her paws. Wood blocks of various shapes and colors piled on the desk to Gisele’s right, and on her left a basket had been filled with finished carved animals, each delicate, detailed, and still dead.

  Gisele’s eyes widened in surprise before her gaze softened. “Carly. I hoped you’d be back.”

  Before Carly could say anything, Gisele’s attention returned to the fish. Of course. It was always that way when Gisele was finishing a carving; the life in the wood demanded her focus.

  Carly looked around the cluttered workshop. No visible food.

  She shrugged, as if there were anyone watching her to see, and went to the basket of finished animals. She began picking through, looking at each one. Her hand wouldn’t be steady enough for a horse. Not today. Gisele must have a special order for fish—there were a dozen. They didn’t interest Carly. Nor did the border collie or the dachshund. A broad-shouldered lab waited to become a black lab or a chocolate lab or a golden lab. Carly fisted the dog, rubbing its wooden snout with her thumb.

  Not right.

  Maybe none of the animals wanted her to paint them alive. After all, she was a thief, and she’d abandoned her mother.

  She closed her eyes and murmured to herself. Choose. She carefully reached deep into the basket, trying not to slice her thumb on a sharp fin or ear. Her hand emerged with a fat frog. Its wide belly was already blond wood, its humped and knobby back a darker color. Exaggerated eyes dominated the fat face and the front legs bowed inward. Its haunches looked well-muscled and powerful. A jumping bullfrog of some kind.

  Very well.

  She settled herself into her own spot, a low desk in the back of the room, surrounded by paints, brushes, and rags. One glance confirmed that Gisele remained lost in her fish. Carly closed her eyes and held the frog to her for the briefest moment, less time than she had ever spent looking for the heart of a being. Who cared, after all? It was just a frog. It felt heavy and solid, easily a pound or maybe one and a half, as heavy as a big apple or a medium-sized stone. Her hand ranged to a deep gray-green, settled for a moment, then passed it, stopping on the shade of black that existed in new winter boots until a moment after you put them on.

  She dipped the ends of a medium-sized horse-hair brush into the paint, and drew it dripping dark along the back of the frog’s head and in a wide stripe down to the nub where its polliwog tail had disappeared. Again, and again, each line touching the other, the paint sliding into the tiniest crevices as it softened the wood toward flesh. The great bumps along the frog’s back got her darkest gray, and the soft parts of the belly a softer grey, but mottled and demanding a few drops of red that turned to buried veins as she painted them on.

  Gisele and the whole room, remained largely silent, the only sounds the soft splash of Carly’s brushes and the snick-snick pause, snick-snick pause of Gisele’s carving knife. Most days this silence was more restful than oppressive. But most days she would have chosen a horse.

  The last thing Carly reached for was the eye-black, which slid from her fingers. The bottle rang sharply against the small ceramic cup Carly had mixed the belly colors in.

  The frog didn’t want black eyes? What now? Green eyes for a black-bodied frog? Her mood wasn’t getting any better.

  The eyes had always been eye-black. Of everything. Horses and dogs and fishes and goats and birds. Always. The eyes were the last step, the final windows into the being.

  She reached to dip her brush into the thickening gray paint in the ceramic dish.

  It didn’t feel right, the brush too light.

  She stared at the frog, giving a near-silent whisper. “What do you want?”

  It didn’t answer. It was, after all, still dead, even though its skin felt cooler and more supple. It held the paint well, barely losing any to her fingers.

  She pondered.

  Her thoughts drifted to the stolen twenty in her pocket and she imagined her mom stumbling though helping some faceless stranger buy candlesticks or a set of mugs or a great round serving plate. No wonder she couldn’t figure out what to do with the frog. She wasn’t giving the damned thing any attention.

  She brought it close to her face and stared at the eyes. Then she poured two great drips of eye-black into the gray belly paint, watching the black and grey mingle, a few traces of red staining it here and there. Her brush slid easily into this paint, and she gave the frog its eyes.

  It blinked in her hand.

  The frog had turned out to be a dark thing, all black, barely lightened by gray, mottled, the only other color the flecks of red on belly and eyes. It stared at her, rocking back so its weight concentrated in the long bony back feet. Its back elbows—or whatever they were on a frog—dug into her palm so sharply she cried out.

  Gisele turned toward her, her eyes startled and her mouth falling open.

  The frog smiled.

  It had teeth.

  It leaped at her. Fast and hard. She flinched back, throwing a hand up for protection and knocking the frog away. It landed on the ground on its back, feet scrabbling against the air for nonexistent purchase.

  The wooden fish Gisele had been working on clattered to the floor.

  The old woman leaped up faster than Carly had ever seen her move, then squatted on the ground, staring at the black frog. When she looked up at Carly, her old yellow-blue eyes were full of something Carly couldn’t quite name: fear or anger or both. Her whisper sounded like a hiss. “Did I not teach you to create the mood of the animal as you paint?” She didn’t wait for an answer. But she picked the frog up, setting her palm on its belly and curling her fingers around its back. As she lifted it in the air, its back feet pressed against her splayed thumb and it nearly leaped free, all the time smiling so the improbable teeth showed.

  Gisele kept her arm extended, keeping the frog far away from them both. She regarded it for a long time, and when she turned to look at Carly, she seemed to be looking at some pitiful being. Her voice held pity, too. “You’ve created a monster.”

  Carly stiffened.

  The frog thrashed.

  Gisele said, “Take it. You must kill it.”

  Carly had thrown up all over the teacher when they’d made her dissect a frog at school. “No,” she said. “No. I won’t kill anything.”

  Gisele shifted the frog to her other hand, her arm shaking a little. Carly couldn’t make the old woman keep the heavy thing. She held her hand out, expecting Gisele to drop it into her open palm. But Gisele shook her head. “Two hands. It’s strong.”

  Carly drew in a sharp breath, and a shiver of fear ran up her arms. She held the bullfrog at arm’s length, as Gisele had, and it twisted and flopped and then, with a great effort, braced both its legs and hopped onto her shoulder. Its sharp teeth dug into the fine flesh of her earlobe just as Gisele swatted it. It leaped from her shoulder to a nearby shelf. “Catch it!” Gisele demanded, “But don’t let it bite you.”

  “What?” Carly blinked. “You carved a vampire frog?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. All the softness left Gisele’s face. “Catch it.”

  Carly swallowed, still mad, maybe even madder. The frog watched her, as if assessing her ability to capture it and deciding she didn
’t have a chance. She stood still in front of it, the frog a foot above her head on the shelf. It didn’t move except for the rise and fall of its fat sides as it breathed. She forced every muscle of her face and back and legs to stay still, moving only her hands . . . slowly . . . slowly. Her arms rose to shoulder height. Hard rain spit against the dusty window, startling her, making her move a bit too fast.

  The frog flinched but didn’t move.

  Carly’s hands neared the bottom of the shelf.

  The frog leaped past them both, seven, maybe eight feet away, landing among the scattered paints and brushes on her desk. It dipped its long tongue into the mix she’d painted its eyes with, just a touch, the tongue a blur of movement between teeth. It leaped again and again. Once it came near Tab, and the cat rose faster than Carly had ever seen the old thing move, the fur on its back straight up so the cat looked twice its size and, briefly, young again. The frog gave Tab a glance before it hopped away, finally stopping as far from the two women as it could get.

  Carly wanted to scream. Everything, absolutely everything she had ever painted alive had been sweet. True, the small paint pony had been skittish, and one dog had run away for two days before coming back, hungry and thirsty, riding in on Gisele’s boot. They’d all been soothable. They’d all gone on to be children’s pets or parts of traveler’s wagons.

  The great black frog didn’t look soothable. It looked like a kid’s nightmare. Its very existence made her hot and angry. First she’d been trapped in the hot booth, then she’d stolen from her own mom, her belly was rumbling empty, and now this stupid frog.

  She turned to look at Gisele. “How?”

  Gisele sighed. “That frog is your black mood.”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t make it black. It wanted to be black.” She remembered how her hand had gone to black. The animals always picked; they guided her hand. “You taught me to stay open and be a conduit for the animal’s soul, for what it wants. The frog wanted this.”