The Outer Harbour

by Wayde Compton

  ARE YOU ALL right?

  Kurt is being shaken. He opens his eyes.

  Are you okay?

  Two young men are there, one standing above him, the other kneeling at his side, his hand on Kurt’s shoulder.

  I’m asking if you’re okay, mate.

  Kurt sits up. Looks around. The three of them are in the field, under the eye of the sun. Then Kurt says something. He speaks to the two men, but the words Kurt says don’t mean anything, even as he says them. His mouth is making a sequence of sounds he doesn’t recognize.

  The two men look at each other. Then the kneeling one says patiently, I’m sorry, buddy, I don’t understand. Do you speak English?

  Kurt has seen one of them before, in the library, the kneeling one: his turban, his beard, his eyes and mouth always set in such a way that suggests he is ready to smile. The other young man he does not recall seeing before. The two of them are carrying soccer balls, orange cones, a net.

  Again Kurt speaks, says something, but it is incomprehensible. He realizes he should, at least, know in his mind what it is he wants to say when he speaks, but he does not. He knows his thoughts, when he does not speak, but when he opens his mouth to speak, his mouth and mind are a blur, a slur, a mumble.

  The Sikh says, Can you stand? Kurt gets up. Can you understand me? Kurt says something that’s nothing. Do you want to walk with us back to the university? Kurt looks around the field and the sky. Though the sun cloaks him with light, he shivers with cold.

  The three of them walk toward the campus.

  Kurt stops at the stable.

  He stands at the fence watching the horses in their stalls.

  The two students try to get him to keep going, but Kurt ignores them. When the always-almost-smiling-one gently tugs at his elbow, Kurt doesn’t know how to communicate his wishes, so he violently pulls his arm back and screams. The two men back away from Kurt. They look shocked. They talk quietly together. They hover and wonder a while, then finally leave.

  Kurt is there alone. He makes no sound.

  He is watching a reddish horse, and he is also climbing the fence.

  He is standing where he stands, and he is mounting the horse’s back.

  He is transfixed in his place, and he is letting it take him away, through the gate, up a trail, into the trees.

  He is there, and he is riding under layers of leaf-born shadows, cracked by the sun.

  He sings a song no one has sung before, and no one anywhere is its audience.

  THE BOOM

  THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH

  May pushes her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose with her index finger, her other hand on the wheel of the Sentra. The shades are the only part of her gear that isn’t right out of the fourteenth century. She’s in a crazy billowing dress with a low neckline, the fabric bunched up beneath her thighs so she can work the pedals unhindered. Her braids are in a topknot, waterfalling down and interwoven with fresh ivy. Everything she’s wearing is a variation of green. She, he thinks, is some kind of Afro-dryad.

  You’re right, Donald says.

  She just drives for a while. Then: I’m not the clothing police. I’m just glad we’re going together.

  Yeah, me too.

  Here’s the thing, May says. There’s a river there, going through the grounds. When you go to bed in your tent, that’s the sound you fall asleep to. It really feels like it could be a thousand years ago. You wearing the tunic’s not the main thing. The main thing is that feeling.

  It’s always a thousand years ago, he mumbles.

  Feel it, she says.

  WHAT IT TURNS out to be, to Donald’s eyes, is a field full of people who have hammered themselves into the approximate shapes of a hundred fantasies. No image is left unrealized, from demons to faeries to a man who has somehow pulled off the appearance of a centaur, complete with moving hindquarters. Some are weirder than the conventional standard of knights and ladies, but the baseline is certainly medieval, with various Eurocentric shadings.

  A blond, braided Viking.

  A “druid’s enclave.”

  A Middle English language pavilion.

  A lecture on tempering your own steel.

  And a swordsman incongruously puffing on an asthma inhaler; a Gorgon checking her cell phone. He points out the intrusions of the real world to May, but she just shrugs.

  So what? I come here to get away from people telling me I’m wrong about stuff. Not to look for new ways to be wrong about stuff.

  The way the Viking looks at May, he notes, is full of unpretending desire.

  HE JUST CAN’T bring himself to wear what his lover made for him. He can’t do it. But, for balance, he stifles the urge to ridicule it all through the lens of identity politics.

  A black man and woman among… creatures.

  The compromise is quietly there, between them, in the field beside the creek.

  BARBARIAN-STYLED CATERERS are roasting an actual pig carcass over an open-pit fire. The booze going round is honey mead, mulled wine, and something called “glögg.” In addition to the swine, it’s all quasi-Dark Ages grub: blood pudding and coarse bread. When they’ve gotten their food—on wooden instead of paper plates—they sit down on the Persian rug May has brought, which she calls her flying carpet. They eat cross-legged on it, her gown spread out around her like a crushed velvet galaxy. Donald is terrified that the pork is undercooked, having just been twiddled above the fire for who knows how long, but he eats it anyway because he’s starving. After the food, the sun dips past the tree line, and the light goes silty. The purchase of fake gold coins is necessary to buy more wine after the first free one, so they get a stack of them and slowly get wrecked on swiche licour. Two satyrs get a bonfire going with, impressively, nothing but a rock, a scrap of iron, and a pile of sticks. After a while the only light is from the fire, the moon, and from a few torches carried by those who go back and forth between the campsite and the Port-a-Potties up near the parking lot. Donald can’t quite believe they are actually going to sleep here, in this field, with these people. When will the costumes come off?

  A sensation goes around the gathering, people talking and craning to see something in one direction at the other side of the fire. There’s even some clapping. At first Donald can’t see what’s going on. Then he spots them: about a dozen figures are at the wood’s edge, just visible at the furthest reaches of the firelight. These new arrivals, he can just perceive, are all in black leather, covered with studs; they look like a 1980s heavy metal group without instruments. Their faces are dark, too. Donald strains to comprehend what he’s looking at, then he realizes they’ve smudged their faces with dark makeup. They’re white people who’ve blackened up, like minstrels.

  Shadow Realmers, May says matter-of-factly. Well, technically they are Spectres, who are like a sub-species of the Shadow Realmers. They live underground during the day and only come to the surface at night.

  What are you talking about?

  May waves her hand in front of her face, as if to clear away smoke—the smoke of his ignorance, he thinks.

  They’ve jumbled together a bunch of different myths, she says. There’s a whole story behind it. It would take a long time to explain.

  They look like Al Jolson playing Mad Max.

  Cosplay, she says. Go with it.

  What do you mean, they live underground?

  They live in a vast network of underground caverns beneath the realm, hundreds of layers deep. Are you okay?

  A thought flares through Donald like a nova. A fear of heights—no, of depth; he once saw a documentary about this; a couple, one who was a hoarder and one who was afraid of long hallways, bridges, gulfs of void, and empty space. A character like this takes shape in Donald’s brain. The character, with this fear, meets these subterranean fantasists. Their imaginary depth is his habituation therapy. He sketches out the whole story in his mind, in an instant. Just a sketch. But there it is, the core.

  He tells it to her. And asks: Can you int
roduce me to them?

  May hesitates. Sure. Yeah. Fiction? About them?

  No, he says. Fiction about the fictional character I’m thinking of. Not about them. Or me. Or you. But yeah, fiction. I don’t know for sure, yet.

  Donald’s gut vibrates with excitement. He feels as if he is evaporating. He feels as if his heart is changing. It becomes unclosed, but hard, like a bucket or a bowl. A container full of smaller, softer hearts, Donald decides.

  DONALD JUST HAPPENED to be in his girlfriend’s neighbourhood that particular afternoon. He’d met with a friend at a café a few blocks from Cassandra’s place, so he decided to drop in on her unannounced, to see if she was home. But only May, her roommate, was there. Cassandra, she said, was on call and had to go in to work. Donald hesitated, and May invited him in.

  She had a little weed, and they got the TV going, a show about earthquakes. One of them suggested they do a simulation of the procedures spelled out on the show. (The Big One will hit Vancouver one day; it’s just a matter of time—no joke.) They got under the coffee table, but decided it was too small and fragile. They finally decided the front hall was the safest, but had to remove the metal toolbox from the top shelf of the closet—those doors would fly open, the box would cave their heads in. They got back on the couch, watched the show some more. Donald excused himself to the bathroom, but instead surprised her by lifting the sofa, hoisting one corner, and May shrieked with laughter, saying, That’s not shaking, that’s just tipping! So he dropped it and dove at her, lifting her feet in the air as if he was going to pick her up and shake her, and she howled with laughter and shouted, Okay! Okay! Okay! But Donald said, There’s no escape! He zoomed down, waving his hands around as if to tickle her, and May was deflecting them, laughing and crying. And suddenly Cassandra was there in the doorway staring at them. Donald got up and said, What? May sat up and said, Earthquake? She straightened her clothes. Cassandra stood there. Donald took one step toward her, and Cassandra, as if in answer, gently set her arm down on the sideboard next to the door like she was going to lean on it. But instead she swept everything off the surface, sending all of it to the floor—the framed photographs, the books, two of May’s dragon’s head candlesticks. Her arm glided across the top like a well-fitted windshield wiper, and that was how that particular afternoon went.

  MAY INTRODUCES DONALD to a Spectre who is clutching a black mug with the embossed image of a spider on it. In addition to the makeup, he has black polish on his fingernails. A medieval Lou Reed. The man says, You should join us. We’ve been trying to acquire Lady May here for ages. But she won’t be corrupted.

  I’d love for you to take me to the caverns, Donald says.

  The Spectre just looks at him. What do you mean?

  May told me you live underground. You’ve got a network of caves or whatever. I’d like to see them. Donald fishes in his pockets for the bag of fake gold coins, the ones they bought their weird booze with. He thrusts it at the guy.

  The Spectre looks at May, his eyes seeking her help. May bumps the look back over to Donald.

  Look, Donald says, I know there aren’t really caverns. But I don’t care. I want you to take me down there. Do you understand?

  There’s a moment. The Spectre squints. Then nods vigorously. Ah, says the guy, as if everything suddenly makes sense. Okay, right. You want to be initiated.

  Donald shakes his head, waves the idea off. I just wanna go there.

  The Spectre looks puzzled, but tugs at his earlobe, like he’s really thinking about it. Well, he says, I could talk to our Head Revenant.

  Yeah, talk to whoever. Just take me there, show me around. Twenty minutes, that’s all. You keep those coins.

  When the Spectre leaves, May asks him, What are you doing?

  Going native, he says.

  DON’T LEAVE ME, she whispers.

  I won’t, he tells her automatically.

  They are in their tent by the side of the river.

  Really, she says. I mean it.

  Mean what? He’s thinking about the worlds.

  They lay holding each other for a long time. The sound of moving water. He can feel the alcohol in him ebbing away. Before he knows it, her breathing is regular and deep, and she’s snoring gently.

  Donald remembers what it is like to be afraid. To be anxious. Imagines an anxiety attack. He closes his eyes, recalls the times in his life when his innards turned to slush and his fingertips went bloodless with stress. Car accidents. Arguments. Breakups. Donald yawns, and settles into his own mind.

  HE WAKES UP.

  He sees light through the skin of the tent. Fire? Torches. Shadows.

  Come out, says a voice from the other side. The voice is female. It says, We are here for the one they call Donald.

  May stirs beside him. She says, What’s going on?

  The woman out there says, You are summoned. If you agree to walk with us, come out and be initiated!

  Donald smiles in the tent, in the dark. He sits up, parts the flap. Can she come too? He says it through the door to the half dozen dark ones standing out there in the torchlight.

  There is a pause. Some low voices. Then: No. It will be you and you alone.

  He backs off, closes the flap, starts to put on his clothes. He dons the tunic.

  Don’t go, May says. Her voice is shaking. He can hear her breathing rapidly.

  Don’t worry, Donald says, I’ll be back in twenty minutes. How long can this take? Half an hour, I bet.

  No, really, I don’t want you to go.

  He kneels beside her. Why? He looks at her in the dim light that filters through the sides of the tent. Seriously, I’ll be back in a flash. These are your friends, anyway, right?

  She’s quiet, but he can feel her rigidity. He reaches for her face, cups her cheek, leans to kiss her. Her lips are hard.

  Donald leaves the tent and stands among them. She’s back in there alone. He wonders if she’s safe—all these costumed nuts around—and says to the Head Revenant, I don’t want to leave her here all by herself. But the woman, her face as black as the sky, says, We’ll keep watch. She’ll be fine. It’s you you should be concerned about.

  Two of the shadows gently put their hands on his shoulders, guiding him into a space between the trees, a trailhead he hadn’t discerned during the day. They walk beside and just behind him, as if Donald’s been arrested. He thinks of purges, recruitments, conscriptions. He’s a guerrilla, an enemy combatant. He isn’t going to the unassailable high ground. This is descent.

  He says to the phantasm at his elbow, What’s going to happen?

  The shadow-man seems to think about this for a while. Then he says, It is like taking a sword and melting the steel. Then re-casting it into a better sword. You will be re-created, re-forged. You will not, the shadow says, be who you once were. Nothing will ever be the same.

  And with that they make him real.

  WHEN DONALD GETS back to their campsite, the tent is gone. There’s no sign of May. His backpack, the only thing left, is sitting on the ground. He looks at one of the Spectres, who was supposed to be keeping watch on her. Where is she?

  He breaks character: She totally left, bro.

  Donald looks around. It’s after midnight in a forest three municipalities from the city. All that’s in his bag is a change of clothes, his toothbrush, comb.

  He makes his way up to the parking lot, tripping on rocks and roots, on the dark uneven ground. When he finally gets to where the Sentra was parked, it’s not there. He stands where it was and looks up at the stars, puts his hands on his head.

  Nice shirt.

  It’s the voice of a woman, two parking spaces to his left, in a van. Its side door is open and she’s in the back there with maybe two others. They’re lighting something and passing it around—a joint or a pipe. The lone light on the other side of the lot doesn’t quite reach the inside of the van.

  Tunic, Donald says. Did you see a woman leave here in a black sports car?

  The owner
of the voice says, Yup, I saw her.

  He approaches them. The woman who spoke sparks a lighter, applies it to what he can now see is definitely a pipe. The bowl of it is a glass nazar—an eye of warding—and when she’s done, she passes it to one of the other women.

  She left?

  About an hour ago.

  Donald digs in his pocket for his phone, but before he gets it out, she informs him that it won’t work.

  This is the back of beyond, she says.

  I can’t stay here, he says. I gotta get home.

  They ignore him while they futz with the dope, finally passing it around again. One of them turns on the interior light. It’s now that he notices that all three have silver hair. They’re young women, but they seem made-up to look aged. When it’s finally the first one’s turn once more, the loamy smoke spews forth. She points the stem of the pipe out at the darkness. There’s a late bus that goes into town. The closest stop is down at the turn-off, she says.

  Could I walk there?

  She checks the time on the dash. Not if you want to make the bus, no.

  One of her friends says, Forget it. We can’t drive him. I’m crashing in ten.

  Sorry, says the first one. Guess we can’t help you.

  He takes out his wallet. Twenty bucks. Just drop me off at the stop. If I miss it, I’ll try to hitch from the highway.

  The third woman, who hasn’t spoken yet, leans over and whispers something in the first woman’s ear. Then the first one speaks up again: How about this. We’ll give you a lift if you sign over to us.

  Sign over?

  You registered when you got here, right? Did you keep your game receipt?

  Donald fishes for it in his pocket. He shows them.

  Pass it here. The third woman reaches out and he gives it to her. She fires the lighter and for a second he thinks she’s going to torch it, but she’s just reading. Yeah, she says. He’s paid up for a whole cycle. She hands it back to him.