by P. K. Tyler
"As you say, yes. But did that matter to him?"
"No."
"No, it did not."
Shahbostan shifted uneasily. He gathered himself and continued.
"He still fancied himself a king, and so the day came when he asked her for a child. Every ruler must sire a prince. She agreed, as was her nature. But since this selfish man had arranged her like a bouquet to please his own passions, little thought had been given..."
Shahbostan bowed his head low and covered his face with his sleeves. Only his beard poked through.
"Shah?" Kizzie asked.
His shoulders heaved with stifled sobs. He choked forth a reply. "How he loved her! Now he is alone."
"She died?"
He kept his face hidden and let his tears star the pavement. His grief left Kizzie's stomach clenched tight, knotted about nothing.
"I didn't mean to…” she began.
Her skin prickled. She looked up at the cloudless summer sky, now weeping along with Shahbostan. Perhaps it remembered her too.
Then, in a flurry of motion, everything twirled away. The market tumbled through the air on spokes of smoke and fire. The gate opened and swallowed everything down—the carts, the fruits, Shahbostan himself. Kizzie squeezed her knees tight and watched it all go. The gate stood open, and she could almost see through the confusion.
It slammed shut. The heavens opened.
* * *
From her bedroom window, she watched the rain fall. The full sun kept a triple rainbow in place over the neighborhood's roofs, and, as the day went on, the three slid together across the horizon like a giant garden snail.
"The devil's beatin' his wife," Aunt Yanine said from the hallway.
Kizzie had heard rain on a clear day called such, but didn't appreciate the phrase. This spectacle was more than folklore; it was proof beyond words. She still had the same feeling she had on that first day—that this was all meant for her eyes. Maybe it was deliberate, or maybe Shahbostan couldn't help himself. Either way, she would see how much one man could suffer.
The rain fell in silver sheets. She sketched the outside scenery on her biggest piece of oil paper.
The gutters flooded. She switched to a detailed underpainting just to feel the brush between her fingers.
The street's shallow river washed away loose trash. She painted the scraps as makeshift boats.
When night came, she used the moment as an excuse to bother J'waun. She leaned into his room. "Need that telescope."
J'waun knelt alongside his bed as if he were in prayer. He was tracing a finger along sports-magazine print and mumbling to himself. "Don't know what—”
"Under your bed."
"You stay out from there!"
Kizzie smirked. He had all kinds of goods tucked away, ‘finds’ which he'd dug up with Stubs and the crew and hadn't yet gotten around to pawning.
"This is yours," she said and crossed the small room. She handed him a finished painting taped to cardboard to keep it from bending.
J'waun took the piece in hand and studied it. "What's it s'posed to be?"
"You."
He scoffed and peered closer.
"What?" Kizzie asked. "You wanna Bouguereau? It's done Duchamp-style, before he went full kook. I call it J'waun Descending the Stairs."
He sat quietly. His expression showed the occasional twitch as if he'd forgotten he was in the company of others.
"I really need it," she said. "There's a moonbow tonight."
"That ain't a thing."
"Sure it is. Look."
She pointed out the window through the still falling rain to a brassy arc bridging Hoboken to Queens. A dome of light fell under its curve.
J'waun looked from his painting to the window and back again. After a lengthy spell, contemplative in his own way, he spoke.
"Don't let her see."
Kizzie accepted the prize and hurried away. She managed to duck out of Yanine's path, and when Yanine left "to surprise her man at the club," Kizzie raided the kitchen of food and drinks. It took a while for J'waun to leave too, but he did after a heated texting session.
If Kizzie understood these situations correctly, it would end soon–on Friday, no sooner, no later. All things magical resolved in threes. That suited her just fine. She had a balcony seat. She went to her bedroom window and examined the security bar release. When she was convinced that she understood its mechanics, she closed her bedroom door and nailed it shut.
* * *
The next morning Yanine went into a fury, swearing and tearing at the door with impressive gusto. After the incident at the club–something about her man's predilection for two-dollar whores–followed by the neighbors' frantic news of imps of smoke and satanic deviltry, finding herself locked out of the bedroom that she goddamned owned was too much to bear.
She scratched and thudded against the door like a caged Rottweiler. "Girl, you gonna pay for this!"
That could mean many things, none of them good, but Kizzie had anted up and wasn't about to fold.
"I'll cut any fool!" she cried. She slipped her borrowed butcher blade under the door and wiggled it about. Yanine screamed all the louder and ran back to the kitchen.
Kizzie would never do such a thing, not really, but couldn't deny a mischievous glee in playing the role. She settled next to the window, gave the triple-bow a cursory glance, and sighted the telescope on the lot. Look closer, he’d said.
Last school year she had finished a project of her own devising with J'waun's grudging help. Together, they'd dug a narrow channel in the old lot, and, after lining the edges with twig pine trees, had set her interpretation of a Lewis and Clark keel boat afloat down a five-gallon Missouri River. She narrated while J'waun stretched out on his belly and filmed with his cell.
It had seemed okay on the little screen, passable if not professional, but when projected before American History II, proved to be a joke. The class laughed and laughed, and she did too, just to hide her shame: her pitiful artistry, her oh so childish mispronunciations, her nasal tone. She wanted to shrivel up and die.
But she had learned a thing or two about scale. A trickling creek doesn't look like a river, no matter how close you place the camera. Its waters flow tight, simple-smooth. The thousands of streams down in the lot now did not. The whole area should be as flooded as the street, but the ground drank the rain down. Its thin, watery ribbons may be a bit wider than they were last week, but not by much, and she saw why.
Through the rain, her vantage wasn't the clearest, but she stared at one spot enough to take it in. Whatever magic Shahbostan used out on the street was behind that fence a million times a million. Those little streams were rivers.
They tumbled over tiny falls, leaped and churned over boulder fields, and swept a lacy froth along shores that couldn't have been more than a spider thread wide. Miniature trees lined the way—not the fatuous twigs-stuck-in-the-sand effort of her old school project, but real trees that swayed with the wind in that ponderous dance that trees do.
She bumped her view sideways over rolling hills, jungled crags, and meadows confettied like a New Year's Eve; past orchards of grenadines, groves of starfruit, and wild vineyards; and then to flowering duchess vines, tangles of sugar suckle, and acres of tahuqand cane.
Kizzie set aside the telescope and calculated distances. It wasn't her strong suit. She tried to measure with her thumb in the air, like an artist in the cartoons, but the proportions changed the further back she went. By her best estimates, she figured the lot to be sized somewhere between Pennsylvania and Greenland.
Out in the hallway, Yanine bawled.
"You wanna be in there so bad?"
"Go away!" Kizzie shouted.
"Crazy girl, I'll see you thrown out. There's rules in my house!"
There were rules for all things. Kizzie waited.
The hours passed and the neighbors made their appearance, as she knew they would. The braver men peered over the fence, but seeing nothing of interest,
walked away satisfied. The more vocal women entreated her from the other side of her bedroom door. They were more convincing than Yanine, more enticing and with sweeter words, but Kizzie didn't doubt their intentions. If they managed to get their hands on her, they'd spirit her away to some Baptist basement. She'd miss the moment.
They spoke of poor Miss Dixon, who was convinced her departed Reuben had visited her this morning for a breakfast of honeydew and rambutan toast. That didn't sound so bad to Kizzie, though the ladies carried on about how it was all the devil's work and how she may be tainted too.
One day faded into the other and they never let up.
"Don't hurt yourself," they said.
"You're a good girl."
"We all love you."
Kizzie kept her sight through the lens. She'd found a herd of eight-legged horses and was noticing the strange way in which they trotted about when her view through the telescope sharpened. The rain had stopped.
She cleared off the window ledge.
From the hallway came the sound of machinery firing up to speed. A blurring sawblade poked alongside the door frame. It stitched in and out with tings of nails giving way. She couldn't be more pleased. Fate thrived on coincidence.
The gate opened and Shahbostan stepped out. Kizzie tied her shoes.
She wasn't sure what Shahbostan was—a genie or a magi or what—but she did know that old tales held truth. This could only be the moment of rescue. He'd give her something. Maybe a wish, or powers, or some sort of wisdom. Whatever it might be, it would set her free.
Another nail snapped clean and her liberators tested the door with thuds and grumbles. They went back to sawing. From their heavy footfalls and low baritones, Kizzie guessed them to be a bunch of utility guys.
She waved from the window, but Shahbostan didn't see. He whirled about and dashed back through the gate. It slammed shut just as Stubs and the crew reached the fence. J'waun tugged at the handle. Stubs kicked and fumed. Easy G boosted up Tyreese and he peeked over the fence.
"No!" Kizzie cried.
The door behind her groaned from the weight pushing behind it and the saw started a sweep along the floor. Kizzie raced over and shoved her dresser in the way. She wedged her bed behind that and looked out the window just as Tyreese went over the fence.
He was there, and then he was gone, pulled into Shahbostan's garden.
The image of him tumbling through a sudden mile-high drop left her dizzy. He would still be falling, right now, screaming. Shahbostan opened the gate again. He waved his arms at the remaining crew and said something Kizzie couldn't hear. J'waun charged him and knocked him back into the lot. Stubs and Easy G followed him in.
She hadn't cried in years, not since her mother left. When her father decided to make money the quick way and got caught, she was already too numb to care. She endured because she had to. She was a lonely maiden in a high tower. If she had patience, one day someone would save her. She never thought J'waun would be the one to try his hand at it.
The door smashed in hard against the bed and unfamiliar voices called out to her.
She wiped her eyes. "Do it myself then."
She yanked the window's security release. The bars lifted and clanged back down. She swore, wedged her foot in the release stirrup and jammed it to the floor. The bars flew free just as her bedroom door fell from its hinges.
She dove through the window and practically fell down the rain-slicked fire escape. Voices shouted from her window above. The bystanders on the street who could have cut her off stood with their hands on their hips and watched how this played out. Inwardly, she thanked them for their indifference. She couldn't let J'waun be hurt.
Shahbostan's face may have shown concern, but she knew him. He was a vain man. He'd dealt with much worse than a few posturing kids who thought themselves to be intimidating. They had no idea what he could do.
She hit the street running. The gate stood open before her and then she was inside.
These feet had never touched wild soil. This skin had never felt sharp thickets. She plunged headfirst into a land that should have left her shaking, yet she didn't fear. Even when a scream that had to be Stubs’, throaty and bubbling, echoed from the deep shadows, she hurtled forward without pause.
Off the stepping stones—one, two, three—and a long leap to the opposite shore, a quick skid down a mossy incline, and straight through the briars. Terraced hillsides tumbled away to her left, every level in bloom. To her right, mountains green to their summits crested the clouds. She ran across meadows of wildflowers and around a low hillock that rumbled and sighed at her approach. From the tangles rose a startled flock, cockatoos with silver eyes and beaks of peppermint.
A massive form shifted in the greenery ahead. A legged serpent with the head of a lion and a body as thick as a smokestack raised itself high. At its front paws cowered the trembling form of J'waun. The serpent stretched its mouth into a wide, open grin, and then stopped to sniff the air.
Kizzie grabbed J'waun's hand. "Get up."
He made to crab-crawl away, but she held him tight. He slipped prone and only then registered who she was. "Sis?"
"Yeah."
"Shit! We gotta—”
The serpent lowered its head and licked its lips. It rested.
J'waun scrambled to his feet with Kizzie's help and looked to the serpent. Its lids were shut and its head bowed, nose in the dirt.
"I don't get it," he said.
"Every famous garden has a snake," Kizzie said. "It's his idea of a joke."
"But, it..."
"She'd never hurt me." Kizzie thumbed one of the serpent's lion-whiskers. It wrinkled its lips. Kizzie chuckled. "Thank you."
J'waun rubbed his nose.
"For trying," Kizzie said, "you know? The world's so hateful. Nobody helps less they have to."
"Is that what you've learned, little one?" Shahbostan sat a stone's throw away, under the shade of a sycamore tree.
"Yes, but..." Kizzie squeezed J'waun's hand. "It's mostly just misunderstanding. People're afraid of each other, for the wrong reasons, or no reason."
"Ah." Shahbostan nodded sagely.
"How do you talk like that?" J'waun asked.
"Like what?" She still hadn't let him go.
"Like him. Nobody understands him."
"I do."
Kizzie watched the canopy sway overhead. She let all the memories come back.
"A long time ago," she said, "there lived a man, a vain man, a king. The Shah of the Garden. Bostan, you see? He made mistakes, as all men do, and lost the one thing he loved most in the world."
J'waun eyed the serpent suspiciously. "Gotta be some honey."
"Yeah. But she was smart, and more sly than he knew. Women need to be sometimes, right?"
J'waun agreed.
"When this man asked her for a son, she gave him a daughter. See, it was her chance to create, so in secret she made sure this gal had her own mind, that she knew how to say no."
"When the daughter got older and became naturally surly, the man lost control. The girl knew ‘bout her mother and hated her father for what he'd done. To punish him, she ran away. She lived a hundred lifetimes, wore a hundred faces, none of them her own, all to make him hurt. She suffered behind each one. Only then did she realize, her pride was the equal to his own. Her mother had made her that way so that they'd always need one another."
Shahbostan rose and came forward. He tapped at the air three times and on the last, closed his fist about the handle of the garden gate. Kizzie put her fingers over his own.
"Baba, father, please know it's true."
Shahbostan rubbed his eyes.
"Don't do that again," Kizzie said. "You mustn't."
He breathed in deeply. "I thought of you every day."
"I know. I heard you. Did you hear me?"
"Little one, my feisty gulbanu, yes."
"I want to stay."
He hugged her close. "You shall."
* * *
/> J'waun stepped out to the sidewalk. Stubs lay in a soiled heap on the pavement. Easy G and Tyreese wept beside him. The neighbors came running over, the fire department too.
Men shook J'waun and held him by the shoulders and demanded answers he couldn't give. They raced through the gate but were too late. The lot went up in a cloud of fluff as if a field of dandelions had found a strong breeze.
It hurt being alone, but he wouldn't show it. Besides, his sister had told him what that flower in her bedroom would do if you put tears into its water. He had plenty of things that could make him cry. When no one was watching, he'd try.
Her cloud rose, yet another leaving him, but he didn't fault her. Everyone deserved a way out.
About the Author
Rhoads hails from Colorado, where he lives with his wife and son. His morbid fascination with horror and weird fiction takes his writing down paths he’s perhaps too willing to follow. Thankfully, the occasional flight of fancy brings readers some reprieve. Somehow, his work has seeped into this publication and other unsuspecting venues, including: The Best Horror of the Year, vol. 7 (edited by Ellen Datlow), Apex Magazine, Death’s Realm (Grey Matter Press), and SQ Mag. The first installment of his occult detective novella, The Devil’s Trill, book one of The Ladies Bristol series, is slated for release this summer by Grey Matter Press.
Aplanetary
by Holly Heisey
Summary: Gemina followed eir lover in an experiment to be born on another world and live as an alien species. But on a harsh, unfriendly world, e finds love and loss, hope and self, and a life e never could have imagined.
While we lay on medical beds in the chilled chamber, we were allowed to see the planet that would soon be our home. The hologram hovered above my eyes, a brown and red world streaked with dark blue water. Clouds spread like lace over the continents and, in some places, gathered into storms.
My heart rate sped up, its rhythm loud and urgent in the medical monitors. One of the med techs, a shape in my peripheral vision, leaned to check the readings. “Doctor, eir heart rate is increasing.”
