Child of Fortune

by Norman Spinrad

  Slowly, reluctantly, I rounded on those gathered behind me, knowing all too well what I would now confront.

  All those who had been in the encampment to witness Pater Pan’s final passage now stood there before me between the caravanserei and the edge of the cliff. In all their eyes, I saw what they must have seen in my own, and this warmed my heart.

  For were these newborn Children of Fortune not the true progeny of the union of our spirits? If it had been the Pied Piper of Pan who had brought them together, had it not been the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt who had set them dancing down the Yellow Brick Road? Were these true Children of Fortune’s spirit not the posterity I had given my lover and were they not as well the sweet ending to my tale that he had left for me?

  But in those eyes I saw as well the worshipful obeisance against which I had railed and guarded myself since first I had found it fawningly directed toward my person in that stiflingly thanatotic tent, and this, to say the least, pleased me not, for it would seem that the Gypsy Joker’s last laugh was on me.

  For had he not in their presence passed the torch of his spirit into my reluctant hands? And had I not wrapped his mantle around me in ire, in order to rouse those lost Children of Fortune from their thanatotic mooning so that I would never again see in their eyes that feckless longing for a perfect master which I saw there now?

  Vraiment, I had told them often enough that Children of Fortune have no chairmen of the board or kings! Yet had I not been constrained by karmic justice to lead them back to the Yellow Brick Road even as the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt had been constrained to spiel her unsought charges back to the worlds of men?

  Indeed, here I stood like Antony over fallen Caesar, like Liberty holding aloft her torch, and there my huddled masses stood hanging on my first words, which grew ever more pregnant with portent the longer I gazed upon them before I spoke.

  Yet how could I chide them for regarding me thusly now? For these were not the feckless urchins I had first found but Gypsy Jokers of the true spirit whom I however reluctantly had led to that becoming, which is to say that I had indeed succeeded in carrying the torch of Pater Pan’s spirit from that moment until this.

  But now if I was to be true to that spirit, if that spirit was to live on in their hearts, I must find the words to pass that torch along, not to some papal successor, but into the hands of each of them, into the hands of the republic of the spirit, where at least according to this teller of the tale, it has naturellement always belonged.

  One last time I sought communion with my Pied Piper, and one last time he contrived to speak to me in the Dreamtime from beyond the temporal veil, as if even the Prince of the Jokers could not lie easy until I had solved his ultimate koan.

  For all at once Pater Pan was there before me at the end of my Golden Summer’s Mardi Gras Parade, outlined by sunset glory against the bonsaied mountains of Edoku, and saying the necessary good-bye that broke all our hearts, While at the same time, in a strange duality of perspective, I had become that avatar, for it was I who stood before our tribe in that valedictory moment now.

  Vraiment, my wanderjahr had come full circle round, for certainement this was indeed the end of my Golden Summer’s Mardi Gras Parade.

  Then it was that my eyes sought out Kim, or mayhap his eyes in that moment had the puissance to draw me to them. He stood near the front ranks, from which vantage, and having caught my eye, his face could speak to me plainly enough. And upon that visage I seemed to see what I sought, a kindred child of the same spirit, ready to carry forth its torch as his own Piper, though as yet he knew it not.

  Vraiment, this was not the end of day, for the sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky, before me the gay tents of our caravanserei still flapped like proud banners above the Yellow Brick Road, and the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt was not the Gypsy Joker King, which is to say that it was I who told the tale, nor was it in my heart to call down the sunset on anyone’s Mardi Gras parade.

  “What would you have me say to you?” I asked them gently. “Before death, there are none but vapid words of wisdom, and before life, we have only the wisdom of our own hearts.”

  A low murmuring rumbled through the little throng. “What shall we do now?” someone called out.

  “Why ask me?” I demanded without ire. “Who am I but one of you?”

  “You’re the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt!”

  “You’re Pater Pan’s true love!”

  “You’re the Gypsy Joker Queen!”

  At this last, I felt the words bubbling forth from my lips as they emerged from the void into my brain, and the song which has carried our species to the far-flung worlds of men from our ancestral trees seemed to be singing itself through me even as I spoke from my own heart.

  “Children of Fortune have no chairmen of the board or queens!” I fairly shouted at them. “Have I not told you that often enough? Have I not freely imparted my meager knowledge of the lore and craft of our immortal tribe? When it comes to the spirit thereof, this each of us must find in our own hearts. So the only words I can speak in homage to the spirit of Pater Pan are those which come from mine now, and those I have already spoken. True Children of Fortune have no chairmen of the board or kings. True Children of Fortune seek not after chairmen of the board or kings. Certainement, no true Child of Fortune would wish to be a chairman of the board or king!”

  And I turned my back and slowly began to walk away.

  For a long moment, I heard only silence, and then the faint far-off music of one of our musical troupes piping its way back to the carnival from the streets of the town far below.

  And then I heard subdued stirrings and murmurings, as the song of the Yellow Brick Road once more reached their ears. As the music played its way closer, up piped the unmistakable voice of Kim.

  “Come, let us remove this sad reminder of a joyful spirit to a more seemly venue, nē, and then what is there for it but to carry on with our enterprises, for while Children of Fortune have no chairmen of the board or kings, when it comes to ruegelt, neither can we expect to be showered with corporate or royal largesse!”

  At this, there was laughter, and the scurrying of feet soon thereafter, so that I had no need to look back out of fear that I had let the torch that Pater Pan had entrusted to my care fall through unready hands. Rather did I join his spirit in one last private smile between us, in the knowledge that under the constraints with which our universe confronts us, I had found the true ending to the only tale there is to tell, the one which allows we Gypsy Jokers to have the last laugh.

  I did not stop walking until I had reached the pinnacle of the hill above the encampment, where I sat alone staring out to sea until twilight began to gather, and Alpa’s sun came down in sheets of brilliant purple and umber light painted across the sky and sheening on the tropic ocean. One by one, the stars began to come out as, one by one, the lights of the town below began to enliven the gathering night.

  Not far below me, the camp of the Children of Fortune greeted the evening with music and laughter and the sounds of gay young voices, and this was as it should be, for the King of the Gypsies and the Prince of the Jokers should be toasted with his own sacraments, and not lugubriously mourned.

  I could not but smile at the music of the carnival as it wafted up toward me on the onshore breeze. Yet, as I sat there, I found myself staring up at the stars beckoning bravely and bright to me up there in the universal night, each a mighty sun, and scattered like a handful of seed among them, the far-flung worlds of men.

  And I knew that the tale of the wanderjahr of Sunshine Shasta Leonardo had come to its end.

  Once I was the little Moussa, the wide-eyed waif who had wandered into the beginning of her story, once I was Sunshine the ruespieler seeking only her own Yellow Brick Road, once I had been the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt who had learned to care for the spirits of her unwanted charges, and at last had I not become the true teller thereof when I passed along the torch?

  A
s I sat there in the gathering darkness reflecting thusly, Kim came puffing up the hillside to join me, and I found myself welcoming his company, welcoming what I was pleased to see in him of the Child of Fortune that I had been.

  “You are looking at the stars, mi maestra?” he said, hunkering down beside me. “Soon you will be out among them, nē?”

  I regarded him with some amazement. “I had not realized your varied talents included the reading of minds!”

  Kim beamed his pleasure at my approval, but shrugged off taking credit for this mental feat. “Why would you tarry long on Alpa?” he declared rhetorically. “You have no true lover to keep you here, and he who would gladly have served as same will himself soon enough be gone.”

  “You plan to leave Alpa, Kim?” I exclaimed in some surprise.

  “Did you not leave the planet of your own birth to follow the path of the Child of Fortune on grander worlds? Vraiment, have you not taught me the ruespieler’s craft, and have I not a certain skill when it comes to commercial enterprise? Florida is a pleasant enough little town for the enfants of Alpa to play at being Children of Fortune in, but once I have earned my passage therein, I will be off on my true wanderjahr out among the stars!”

  “You seek my approval for this venture?” I said, for he smiled at me with hopeful expectation.

  “Surely you will not deny me the same!” he declared. “Surely you will not now seek to claim me with a profession of undying carnal love?”

  I burst out laughing and could not help but hug him to me, nor could I help but feel pleasure at the touch of his frankly delighted flesh, nor could I help but be charmed by the rising of his young manhood against me.

  I pulled a distance away from him but kept my arms on his shoulders as I stared into his lustful eyes. “Now, it is you who are rejecting my advances?” I said, toying my lips with my tongue, and grinning at his newfound and entirely becoming shyness.

  “Do I take your meaning right, mi maestra?” he asked in quite a smaller voice.

  “Seeing as how we are both soon to depart from this planet, mayhap never to meet again, and seeing as how I see in you a brother spirit, you need only summon the courage to give over showering me with honorifics and address me lover to lover as Sunshine like a proper natural man, and you shall forthwith have your heart’s desire in this romantic venue, out here above the ocean and beneath the stars,” I told him, setting my hands on my hips.

  “Sunshine, Sunshine, Sunshine!” he yipped like a happy puppy, and then like puppies indeed, we were tumbling each other in the grass, as he sought to apprise himself of my intimate possibilities with more eager avidity than manly grace and skill.

  Indeed even doffing our clothing was a matter of some confusion as Kim sought to undress us both at once while continuing to attempt to fondle me at every moment with both hands.

  As for me, while my body was enjoying the sheer lustful avidity of this callow lover, my spirit took pleasure as well in the very charming naïveté thereof, which both gave the lie to Kim’s boasts of tantric expertise, and made me appreciate the chutzpah thereof with all the more delight.

  When after a good deal of this erotic tussle and groping, we had at last revealed our nakedness to each other, Kim hesitated, propped up on his elbows atop me, regarding me with some trepidation, even as the pride of his lingam sought to enter my yoni with a will of its own.

  “Quelle problem, männlein?” I asked him as lightly as I could.

  “Ah…oh…the truth of it is that I am given to hyperbole!” he stammered. “No doubt you will be entirely appalled to learn that I may not be quite the adept of the tantra that I sometimes pretend…”

  I laughed, and pulled him to me, and rolled myself over onto him. “In this moment, no other declaration could so inflame my passions, liebchen,” I told him, and became the director of our tantric figure, taking matters firmly into my own hand until they became firmer still, and proceeding to give him a series of lessons in the art I would hope he would not soon forget.

  Yet though I sought to apprise him of the variety of possible tantric figures in some detail and at great length, I eschewed the employment of my ring of Touch, for on the one hand I had no desire to leave him pining away for the memory of an impossible magic moment of ecstasy which the natural favors of no other woman could ever match, and on the other hand, I would have been a villainess to overmaster such manfully admitted innocence with secret electronic powers.

  Indeed, it was as we lay in each other’s arms there, after he at length had absorbed sufficient schooling to overmaster my natural woman with phallic prowess that brought me to a single soul-satisfying cusp, that in my heart I relegated the Touch to my father’s commerce. Let it be used to treat dysfunction or rouse the jaded energies of the erotically feckless, in the service of whom it would no doubt be a great boon. But as for this natural woman, never more would I intrude such unnatural machineries into open-hearted intimacy with the natural man.

  After a time we dressed, and stood there together for a few last moments, looking out across the nearby lights of the encampment, and the more distant lights of the town, and the lights in the sky above the ocean, brighter and more distant still.

  “Mayhap our paths will cross again out there sometime,” Kim said. He laughed gaily. “And if they do not, rest assured I will remember this night with you always.”

  “And indeed you certainly should, my little Gypsy Joker!” I declared. We laughed together, and with that we parted, for certainement there is no better loverly farewell than that.

  I watched Kim descending the hillside toward the Gypsy Joker encampment, toward his true wanderjahr, toward the Yellow Brick Road upon which I had first set foot a Child of Fortune’s lifetime ago, until he had entirely disappeared from my sight into the carnival where his borning spirit belonged.

  Then I began descending the other side of the mountain toward the town below and my future life in the worlds of men beyond. There was a spring in my step and no regret in my heart.

  For it was in that moment that I chose to name myself Wendi Shasta Leonardo, in homage to my friend and mentor and to my own new version of the heroine of the ancient mythos, but in homage as well to this very future self who now half a lifetime later looks back on her Golden Summer as a Child of Fortune, and in the spirit thereof, transcribes these, the last words of her tale.

  Born in New York City in 1940, Norman Spinrad has traveled extensively throughout America and abroad to Europe and the Far East. He has been a sandalmaker, a literary agent, a critic and columnist, and a radio talk show host. His novels and short stories, including BUG JACK BARRON and THE VOID CAPTAIN’S TALE, have been translated into a dozen languages and nominated for ten Nebula and Hugo Awards. His novel THE IRON DREAM, a National Book Award nominee, won the Prix Apollo, and his novella RIDING THE TORCH won the Jupiter Award. A former president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, he is also the author of STAYIN’ ALIVE: A WRITER’S GUIDE. He currently lives in Los Angeles.