“I stop by the hospital to make arrangements for the body that my father has left behind. A kindly social worker helps me, giving me the name of a mortuary, telling me where to call to get copies of the death certificate, offering words of sympathy. Eventually I leave, taking the mirror with me. There’s no sign of the stone tool among my father’s things.
Late that night, I take the mirror to the train station. Light of a half-moon is shining down on Pennsylvania Street. I walk down the steps to the 22nd Street train station, alert to every noise around me.
When I reach the train tracks, I head south. No one is there. The graffiti artists are taking a night off. Their past creations look gray and black, the colors invisible in the moonlight.
A short distance from the benches and ticket machine, the tracks go into a tunnel. I lean the mirror against the wall beside the tunnel entrance. Somehow it seems right to put it by the tunnel mouth, near the entrance to the underworld. Well, maybe not quite the underworld—it isn’t a very long tunnel. But it’s the closest thing to an underworld there is around here.
My father had smoked when I was young. My early memories of him are tobacco-scented, wreathed in smoke. The father in those memories is strong and tall and energetic. He could sweep me up and toss me in the air, swing me by my arms until my feet left the ground.
I take a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and I tear the cigarettes open, one by one. I scatter the tobacco on the ground in front of the mirror. I am mixing my magic systems, I know. Native Americans offered tobacco to the spirits. The frogs call; something rustles in the bushes. An opossum? A raccoon? Something else?
I sit by the train tracks near the mirror for a time and think about death. Every now and then, someone will commit suicide by walking in front of a train. Such a noisy, messy, industrial way to go.
I leave the mirror and head for home. That night, I surf the web.
On Rocky’s site, I find that he has been working on a fairyland. When I log in, I am given an avatar.
This is not a fairyland that would meet with Tiffany’s approval. Yes, there are leafy groves, but the trees are gnarled and menacing, draped with Spanish moss. Little light reaches the forest floor and I have the sense the creatures other than fairies lurk in the shadows.
There’s a fairy village, but the mud huts are neither elegant nor appealing. The carcass of a mouse, marked with the wounds that killed it, hangs curing in the shadows. There are no fairies in residence.
I explore Rocky’s fairyland carefully. In the dark bole of a hollow oak I find a tunnel that goes down, down, down into the underworld.
I move my avatar through the darkness, the way illuminated by faintly glowing marks on the tunnel walls. I reach a dead end. A wooden door, closed with a bar and a large padlock, blocks my way.
I lay my hand on the door and the words “THIS WAY CLOSED” glow on the bar in neon green. I know what to do.
I reach out to the letters and touch the D, then the E, then the A, T, H. Death. Each letter winks out when I touch it. When I touch the H, the padlock and the bar dissolve. The door opens.
I stand by the open doorway, looking into a dark and misty world. I listen—and in the distance, I hear the low wail of a train’s horn, the rumble of metal wheels on tracks. I catch a faint scent of wild fennel and tobacco.
Listening to the train rumble in the distance, I know the way is open, but I don’t need to go there. I close the door.
“At work the next day, I see Rocky in the lunchroom and pull up a chair next to him. “I visited Fairyland last night,” I tell him.
He glances at me, startled.
"I particularly liked your attention to detail in the hollow oak,” I continue.
He can’t help himself—he is smiling now. A little smug, more than a little arrogant.
"Nice trick on the password.”
That surprised him. “You opened the door?”
My turn to nod. “Obviously, I didn’t go in.”
He is considering me now—eyes narrowing. “Maybe later,” he says.
"That goes without saying.” I study him for a moment—face soft as a boy’s, the arrogant confidence of the young in his eyes. Forever young. “I’ve been wondering where you got the name Rocky,” I say. “Nobody names their kid Rocky.”
I’ve been thinking about Rocky, a twenty-something web designer with an attitude and an obsession with death. Could he be something more?
Do you believe in Peter Pan? A boy who never grows up, a boy who knows his way to fairyland and back, a boy with the power of death in his hands. When Disney made a movie of Peter Pan, they kept the happy moments, but left out the essence. When Wendy’s mother thinks about Peter Pan she remembers this: when children die, Peter Pan goes partway with them. Partway to fairyland where the dead people are.
“The next day, at the 22nd Street train station, I look for the mirror. It’s gone. Perhaps someone who needed a mirror picked it up. I hope they have a cat.
I sit on the bench by the tracks, sketching in my notebook as I wait for the train. In my sketch, two fairies crouch beneath the feathery fronds of a fennel plant. They wear war paint, stripes of color on their cheeks that help them blend with the shadows. One holds a spear made from a chipped stone point lashed to a pencil. He looks a bit like my father when he was younger and happier. The other fairy wears a Tinker Bell skirt, but she has a stone knife at her belt. Her face is in the shadows, but she has dark hair like my mother. It is sunny where they are. I’m glad of that.
These two are hunting for mice, I think. Tiffany’s fairies drink dewdrops and sip nectar from flowers. Mine prefer protein.
The fairies look purposeful, but content. They have a simple existence: a hut to live in, mice and frogs to hunt. But that’s enough.
The sun shines on the hillside covered with fennel and blackberries, on the concrete marked with messages that are not for me. In the stream, the irises are blooming.
Let Maps To Others
KJ Parker
K. J. Parker was born long ago and far away, worked as a coin dealer, a dogsbody in an auction house, and a lawyer, and has so far published thirteen novels (the “Fencer,” “Scavenger” and “Engineer” trilogies, and standalone novels The Company, The Folding Knife, The Hammer and Sharps), three novellas (“Purple And Black,” “Blue And Gold” and “A Small Price To Pay For Birdsong,” which won the 2012 World Fantasy Award) and a gaggle of short fiction. Married to a lawyer and living in the southwest of England, K. J. Parker is a mediocre stockman and forester, a barely competent carpenter, blacksmith, and machinist, a two-left-footed fencer, lackluster archer, utility-grade armorer, accomplished textile worker, and crack shot.
K. J. Parker is not K. J. Parker’s real name. However, if K. J. Parker were to tell you K. J. Parker’s real name, it wouldn’t mean anything to you.
There is such a place. And I have been there.
They all say that, don’t they? They say; I met someone once who spent five years there, disguised as a holy man. Or; the village headman told me his people go there all the time, to trade timber and flour for spices. Or; the priest showed me things that had come from there—a statuette, a small, curiously fashioned box, a pair of shoes, a book I couldn’t read. Or; from the top of the mountain we looked out across the valley and there it was, on the other side of the river, you could just make out the sun glinting off the spires of the temples. Or; I was taken there, I saw the Great Gate and the Forbidden Palace, I sat and drank goat-butter tea with the Grand Master, who was seven feet tall and had his eyes, nose and mouth set in the middle of his chest.
You hear them, read them. The first, second, third time, you believe. The fourth time, you want to believe. The fifth time, you notice a disturbing pattern beginning to emerge—how they were always so close they could hear the voices of the children and smell the woodsmoke, but for this reason or that reason they couldn’t go the last two hundred yards and had to turn back (but it was there, it is there, it’s real, it really
exists). The sixth time breaks your heart. By the seventh time, you’re a scholar, investigating a myth.
I am a scholar. I have spent my entire life investigating what I now firmly believe to be a myth. But there is such a place. And I have been there.
"The duke,” she said, “is watching you.”
Bearing in mind where we were, who she was and what we’d been doing, I sincerely hoped she was talking figuratively. “You don’t say.”
"Oh yes.” She tugged at the sheet. Women feel the cold. “He’s very interested in you.”
Another thing women do is say things that aren’t entirely true. Men do this, of course; but usually for a reason, usually a reason you can perceive; a shape hidden under the lies, like a body under a blanket. You see a blanket, but you can trace where the arms, legs, chest are. Women, by contrast, say untrue things just to see where the path will lead. “I doubt it,” I said. “He won’t have heard of me.”
"Of course he’s heard of you.”
I yawned. I didn’t feel like conversation. “My father, possibly,” I said. “Maybe, just conceivably, my brother, because of the lawsuits. Me, no. Nobody’s heard of me.”
She cleared her throat.
"Outside of the Studium,” I amended. “And the scholarly fraternity at large. I confess, I’m reasonably well known among my brother scholars. That fool who believes, they call me. Outside of that, though—”
She nuzzled against me, purely for warmth. “The greatest living authority on Essecuivo,” she said.
"Exactly. That fool who believes. What on earth could that possibly have to do with the duke?”
"He’s bought the Company.”
I felt a shiver that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “Then he’s an idiot,” I said. “Even if he only paid a penny for it.”
"He doesn’t think so.”
"Well, he wouldn’t.”
"And it was rather more than a penny,” she went on, talking to the ceiling. “He’s mortgaged Sansify and Gard Hardy and sold his half share in the tin mines to raise the money. He’s serious about it.”
I frowned; it was dark, so she couldn’t see me. “I feel sorry for his sons,” I replied. “It’s miserable, being the poor son of a rich father. You never quite manage to get away from it. Mind you, there’s a substantial difference in scale. My father was well-off, but nothing at all like—”
"He thinks it’s a good investment.”
I really wasn’t in the mood for talking about the duke; especially since the conversation also appeared to involve Essecuivo, a subject I talk about incessantly among scholars and never to outsiders. In fact, I didn’t want to talk at all. I just wanted to go home; but you can’t, can you? Not straight away. “Well,” I said, “I hope his faith turns out to be justified, naturally. If so, I’ll be as pleased as I’ll be amazed.”
I felt her turn towards me. “It does exist, doesn’t it?” she said. “There is such a place.”
I sighed. “Yes,” I said. “I believe it exists. Aeneas Peregrinus went there, and he was real enough. But we don’t know where it is.”
"You don’t know?”
"And I’m the greatest living authority.” I sighed. “One of the greatest living authorities. Professor Strella, in Aerope, would dispute that last statement, but he’s a fraud. Carchedonius of Luseil—”
"You must have some idea.”
I stretched. Time to get up and go. “It exists,” I said. “Somewhere. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. I’d better go.”
"No.”
"I’d better. He might come back early, you never know.”
"It’s the second reading of the Finance Bill,” she said irritably, “he won’t be back till the morning. You never want to stay.”
"I really should go.”
"Fine. That’s fine.” You see what I mean. They’re always saying things they don’t mean. “Tomorrow?”
"Not sure about tomorrow,” I said, “I may have to dine in Hall. And then I’ve got a lecture to prepare. The day after tomorrow would be better.”
"Suit yourself.”
I slid out of bed, felt for my trousers in the dark. I always find that sort of thing exquisitely distasteful. “Is the House sitting next week?”
"I don’t know.”
Of course she knew. But I could look it up in the gazette. I pulled on my shirt, then hesitated. “Is the duke really interested in me?”
"Yes.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he’ll be good for a few marks toward the chancel fund,” I said. “It’s getting pretty desperate, the rain’s coming in under the eaves.”
I was born in the City. My father was a junior partner in the Eastern Sea Company, which at that time was a cross between a bank and a munitions factory. He was on the munitions side of things; he ran the ordnance yard where they cast the cannons and mortars that would be mounted on the ships that would make the journey to Essecuivo, to sell woolen cloth, tin plates, mirrors, shovels, whatever in return for cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, fine red pepper and the curious root that cures plague, syphilis and baldness. Because nobody had discovered Essecuivo yet, there wasn’t exactly a hurry; so, in order to keep the cash flow moving along, the Company sold the cannons and mortars my father made to the kings and dukes of neighboring states, who always managed to find a use for them. Back then, money was still pouring in to the Company (because everybody knew it was only a matter of time before someone found Essecuivo), and the directors invested it sensibly in worthwhile projects, to build up the capital against the day when the crucial discovery was made and the Company could launch its first fleet. It was called the Eastern Sea Company because, on the balance of the evidence then available, it was generally held that Essecuivo was somewhere to the east. But if it had turned out to be in the west, they wouldn’t have minded. They were practical men, back then.
My father was a practical man. He wasn’t convinced that Essecuivo would simply fall into our laps like an overripe pear; it would need finding, so someone would have to find it. Ordinarily he’d have done it himself (he was a great believer in if-you-want-something-done-properly) but he was too busy with supervising the cannon-founders and doing deals with foreign princes to find the time, so it seemed logical to keep it in the family and give the job to his spare son (me). Accordingly, from the age of nine I was tutored in geography, history, languages and book-keeping (for when I’d found Essecuivo and established our first trading post there). When I was sixteen, I was sent to the Studium, which possesses a copy of every book ever written, to continue my studies. And there I stayed, becoming the youngest ever professor of Humanities at age thirty-two.
Every book, I discovered, except one.
I first encountered Aeneas Peregrinus when I was twelve. I read about him in Silvianus’ Discourses. Aeneas Peregrinus had been to Essecuivo, three hundred years ago. He set off from the City with a cargo of lemons, heading for Mesembrotia, but was blown off course by a freak storm. The storm lasted for nine days, and when the wind dropped, nobody had any idea where they were; even the stars were different, Aeneas wrote. For four weeks they drifted, until another storm, even more ferocious than the first, picked them up and carried them at terrifying speed for eight days, then died away as suddenly as it had arisen. On the skyline, they could see land. They sat becalmed for a further three days, until a gentle breeze carried them to what turned out to be Essecuivo, where the soil and climate are the best in the world, the people are gentle, sophisticated, wealthy beyond measure and wildly generous, and where they’d never seen a lemon.
Aeneas sold his cargo for its weight in gold, then spent a month or so travelling round the country talking to noblemen, priests and scholars, finding out everything he could about the wonderful country he’d stumbled across. Most of all, naturally, he wanted to find out where it was. That, apparently, was no problem; the Essecuivans are exceptionally learned in astronomy, geography and all related sciences, and taught him the principles of latitude and the
techniques of advanced navigation using the astrolabe, compass and sextant (all previously unknown outside Essecuivo) which every ship’s captain uses to this day. With this knowledge, it was a simple matter for Aeneas to fix the relative positions of Essecuivo and the City and plot a course home. The return journey took him three weeks, partly because he was held up by contrary winds a third of the way over. He arrived home with his cargo of gold ingots, and immediately sat down to write his two great books. The first of these, A Discourse on Navigation, he presented to the Council, who made him a Knight of Equity and set up a ten-foot-high statue in his honor in what is now Aeneas Square. The second book, a complete description of Essecuivo, including precise directions for finding it again, he kept to himself, although he occasionally showed selected passages to his close friends. After all, he reasoned, he was determined to go back there and make a second massive fortune, and quite possibly a third, fourth, fifth and sixth, for as long as the Essecuivans were prepared to pay ridiculous prices for lemons. Only an idiot would disclose the secret of unlimited wealth, and risk a flooding of the market.
Aeneas Peregrinus died suddenly, at the age of forty-six, three hundred and seven years ago. At the time of his death, the whereabouts of the manuscript of his second book were not known. It hasn’t been seen since.
I’m not sure if I’m a geographer or a historian, or whether geography’s a humanity or a science. What I do know is that, if I really am smart enough to deserve a chair at the Studium, I should’ve asked myself what a senator’s young trophy wife ever saw in me, long before that casual mention of the duke. Still, better late than too late.
I walked home slowly through the back alleys, and every turning and doorway was crawling with the duke’s men, watching me, taking notes, except that I couldn’t quite see them. By the time I reached the lodge I was exhausted. The porter got up from his nice warm fireside and handed me a note.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 7 Page 56
