I said, “Why are your eyes all red?” and she said she had really tied one on last night, and I wanted to know one what, but then there was Louise with scrambled eggs on her face so I never did find out.
Louise ate up all her breakfast and didn’t offer me any except the toast crusts. I told her I was hungry and there were werewolves starving in China. She said that was tough toenails and threw her juice glass at me. Then we went to her room and she said we were going to play Davy Crockett again.
I said, “I want to play Robin Hood instead and you can be Richard Greene.”
She told me fat chance, and Robin Hood was a big pansy. She laughed at me when I said he was not a flower just because he wore green all the time, on account of living in Sherwood Forest where it was important for camelflog. Then she told me what she meant about Robin Hood being a big pansy and laughed at me some more when I said that sounded absolutely ugh.
“That’s nothing, you baby,” she said. “You should hear what your mommy and daddy did together to get you born.” And she told me that, too, and it was even more ugh.
“My mommy and daddy never did that,” I said. “My daddy told my mommy that the Revolution needed more soldiers to fight the boorjwah oppressors so they got me from the Workers’ Collective because from each according to his ability to each according to his needs and they needed me for the Revolution, so there.”
Here is what Louise did then: stare at me like her frog dog.
Here is what she did next: turn to me and say, “I bet you are the daughter of that stupid Commie who shot himself in the park last year. The police were looking for you. You’re going to be put in an orphanage.”
I said, “No, I am in the System and my daddy is in this hotel visiting the Rosenbergs. He told me to sit on that park bench and he went away and he is in here somewhere. I am going to find him before I am one single minute older. That will show you. Good-bye.” But when I tried to walk past Louise, she shoved me back so hard I fell on some of her broken toys, which are everywhere, and it hurt.
She said, “You’re nuts. He’s dead. It was in all the papers last summer. I read all about it. So did Amanda. I’ll prove it to you.” Then she hollered for her governess to get into the room fast or else and when she came rushing in Louise told her, “This is that dead Commie’s kid. She’s stupid and crazy and she thinks her daddy’s coming back. Tell her!”
First Amanda stared at Louise. Then she stared at me. Her eyes were all soft and watery. She said, “Miss Louise, you cawn’t cawn’t cawn’t expect me to tell a child such a thing until I am sure this is the child in question. I would like to speak with her alone, if you please.”
Louise said, “No. I wanna watch.”
Amanda said, “There is a large box of petty force in my room, which I was saving for myself,” and Louise scootled away to utterly lay waste to the whole thing. Then Amanda turned back to me and asked me all of these questions about my name and my daddy and what happened in the park that night. I told her everything she wanted to know except about how the frog dog bit me and the rest of it. She gasped a lot.
Then she said, “Oh, you poor child, I am afraid that everything that wretched little beast told you is true. My heart breaks for you, but your daddy is indeed No More By His Own Hand and you match the newspaper descriptions of that unfortunate man’s lost little girl.” She put her arms around me and hugged me tight again like when she thought I was a lamb. That was nice. She smelled like lilac bath powder and lemon candies. She cried in my hair. I cried, too, because now I knew my daddy was not coming back ever again at all and I was utterly heartbroken.
Louise came back in with a whole bunch of petty force grundled up in her fists. Her fingers were leaking pink and green icing and yellow cake. When she saw Amanda and me crying on each other she threw those lumps of squooshed petty force at us and laughed. She said I was a crybaby and I should stick my head in gravy and wash it off with ice cream and send it to the Navy.
Amanda said, “Miss Louise, you ought not not not mock this poor orphaned child. You are Privileged and you should use what you have to help those who do not have as much and be thankful your lot in life is not theirs.”
I wiped my tears on Amanda’s blouse and said, “Yes, like Marks said, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs or else.”
Louise showed us this absolutely rank grin all smoolied over with melted petty force icing and said, “She is a Commie just like her stupid dead daddy and you are a Commie sympathizer and I am going to turn you both in to the police and my mother now.”
I said, “Thank you for a lovely time, Amanda. You have been very nice to me and I will do my best to see that you are not devoured by the spawn of my loins, but I really must be going now.” I shook Amanda’s hand and headed right for that door but Louise grabbed me and twisted my arm hard and said, “You’re not going anywhere, except an orphanage and jail.” Then she knocked me down and sat on me.
Amanda said, “Miss Louise, you cawn’t cawn’t cawn’t be serious about any of this. Get off the poor child this instant!” But Louise said that if Amanda did not move her fat rump the Hell out of there, she was going to call the police herself and tell them Amanda was a big lady pansy and then she could keep me company in jail and see how she liked it.
Amanda said that was a dreadful lie, but Louise asked her if she felt like seeing who the police believed, some old English bag or someone whose mother had more money and influenza than God Himself. That was when Amanda burst into tears all over again and ran out of the apartment and Louise and I were left alone.
Here is what I said: “You better get off me now.”
Here is what she said: “Make me.”
Then I said, “Maybe I can’t make you get off me now, but just you wait until the moon is full and I start to itch all over and I completely burst right out of my clothes if I do not get them off in time and I become a wolf and rip your throat out.”
That was when she laughed at me some more and called me a looney and said I would wind up in an orphanage and jail and the nut house, but that it came as no surprise to her because everyone knows all Commies are crazy. She asked me, “Do you know what would fix you right up, you big screwball? A lobotomy. Would you like a lobotomy?”
I said, “What I would like is to be old enough to be Foretold and Inevitable so I could start itching right now this very minute and-ow! Stop bouncing on me!-and not have to-ow! I told you, stop that, you’re making me mad!-and not have to wait until full moon to grush y’r froab in my powfur zhaws ob def an’-Ow! Ow! Ow-owOOOOOO!”
Oh my Lord, Lily Packmother simply would not approve of what happened. She says that just because we live like savages in Central Park and become ravening, murderous, bloodthirsty beasts every time the moon is full is no reason not to respect Tradition or we would be no better than Trade Unionists. But I could not help any of it. It was all enormously Foretold and Inevitable and fun. I did not have a warning itch even one little bit and it was still daylight outside let alone time for the full moon when my clothes simply burst right off before I knew it, and I think I was lots and lots bigger than I usually get when the Change is upon me, and Louise screamed but not for long because I am very ’fishent.
That was pretty much that. Louise tastes like old hardboiled eggs and does not have any trousers I could borrow to cover my shame afterward, which is what Lily Packmother calls it, only more of those stupid dresses.
Here’s what I can do: Burp up patent-leather shoe buckles.
It took me utterly forever to find one drop of mustard in that whole apartment, for Lord’s sake.
I am Emmeline. I am six. I live at the Plaza Hotel.
I have to. Louise’s mother does not visit often, but when she does, it would be a good idea if there were a little girl of approximully the right age to say hello and what did you bring me? I will have to get used to having a different name now. Lily Packmother says so. She says it is the least I can do so Amanda can keep her
job and not have to face a lot of uncomfortable questions from the police. Besides, Amanda says it isn’t as if that rich sow will ever catch wise, not for how little she has ever cared about having a child in the first place, and some people are not fit to raise a begonia let alone a little girl.
I am not a begonia and I am really not Louise. I am still me, Emmeline.
I am going to have lots of toys.
I visit Lily Packmother in Central Park all the time. She and Amanda have become very good friends. They both say how proud they are of me for being a big girl and solving a big problem all by myself even if I did solve it with a very messy solution. But Lily Packmother says that is all water and other liquids under the bridge and Amanda says she is only sorry in theory about what I did to that little bitch, no offense meant to Lily Packmother and none taken.
The Vessel of Lyncanthropy has a new name, too. I gave it to him. He is Frankie because that is a lot easier to spell on my drawings of him and also because I still love hot dogs. He says the fact that my power to turn into a wolf in broad daylight manifestoed so soon means that I was the Chosen One and how! He says once I grow up and get the ball rolling, ordinary humans won’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell. Amanda says he should not not not use such language in front of a mere child.
That makes Frankie sad because I am going to take whole entire ages to get that ball rolling, on account of the backwards dog years and me being as young as I am to start with. Then he cheers up because he is immortal and good things are worth waiting for and the twenty-first century is not that far away. He says the humans may be harder to catch then, on account of all the flying cars and jet packs strapped to their backs, but we werewolves will manage.
I say, “Hello, Housekeeping, send someone up to clean our room there are lots and lots of stains all over from the roast beef dinner I had that exploded please give yourselves a gigantic huge tip thank you and charge it please.”
Now all I have to do all day is play in the Plaza Hotel and not give Amanda too many headaches and see to it that the rest of the pack gets a fair share of any leftovers we have from dinner. Then I watch television. I get to watch Robin Hood all I want.
Oh my Lord, there is absolutely too much for one small child to do while waiting around for my loins to spawn and bring about the Kingdom of the Werewolves or to infiltrate the power base of the moneyed classes and overthrow Capitalism, whichever comes first. It will be fun.
Tomorrow I think I’ll write Comes the Revolution! on all the tabletops in the Palm Court with Amanda’s Hazel Bishop red lipstick.
Ooooooh, I absolutely love waiting for the Revolution!
I am Emmmm… Louise. I am six.
For now.
Sea Warg by Tanith Lee
One dull red star was sinking through the air into the sea. It was the sun. But eastward the October night had already commenced. There the water was dark green and the air purple, and the old ruinous pier stood between like a burnt spider.
Under the pier was a ghostly blackness, holed by mysterious luminous apertures. Ancient weeds and shreds of nets dripped. The insectile, leprous, wooden legs of the pier seemed to ripple, just as their drowning reflections did. The tide would be high.
The sea pushed softly against the land. It was destroying the land. The cliffs, eaten alive by the sea (smelling of antique metal, fish odour of Leviathan, depth, death), were crumbling in little pieces and large slabs, and the promenade, where sea-siders had strolled not more than thirty years ago, rotted and grew rank. Even the danger notices had faded and in the dark were only pale splashes, daubed with words that might have been printed in Russian.
But the sea-influencing moon would rise in a while.
Almost full tonight.
Under the pier the water twitched. Something moved through it. Perhaps a late swimmer who was indifferent to the cold evening or the warning danger-keep out. Or nothing at all maybe, just some rogue current, for the currents were temperamental all along this stretch of coast.
A small rock fell from above and clove the water, copying the sound of a rising fish.
The sun had been squashed from view. Half a mile westward the lights of hotels and restaurants shone upward, like the rays of another world, another planet.
When the man had stabbed him in the groin, Johnson had not really believed it. Hadn’t understood the fountain of blood. When the next moment two security guards burst in and threw the weeping man onto the fitted carpet, Johnson simply sat there. “Are you okay? Fuck. You’re not,” said the first security guard. “Oh. I’m-” said Johnson. The next thing he recalled, subsequently, was the hospital.
The compensation had been generous. And a partial pension, too, until in eighteen years’ time he came of age to draw it in full. The matter was hushed up otherwise, obliterated. Office bullying by the venomous Mr. Haine had driven a single employee-not to the usual nervous breakdown or mere resignation-but to stab reliable Mr. Johnson, leaving him with a permanent limp and some slight but ineradicable impairments both of a digestive and a sexual nature. “I hope you won’t think of us too badly,” said old Mr. Birch, gentle as an Alzheimer’s lamb. “Not at all, sir,” replied Johnson in his normal, quiet, pragmatic way.
Sandbourne was his choice for the bungalow with the view of the sea-what his own dead father had always wanted, and never achieved.
Johnson wasn’t quite certain why he fitted himself, so seamlessly, into that redundant role.
Probably the run-down nature of the seaside town provided inducement. House prices were much lower than elsewhere in the south-east. And he had always liked the sea. Besides, there were endless opportunities in Sandbourne for the long, tough walks he must now take, every day of his life if possible, to keep the spoilt muscles in his left leg in working order.
But he didn’t mind walking. It gave extra scope for the other thing he liked, which had originally furnished his job in staff liaison at Haine and Birch. Johnson was fascinated by people. He never tired of the study he gave them. A literate and practiced reader, he found they provided him with animated books. His perceptions had, he was aware, cost him his five-year marriage: he had seen too well what Susan, clever though she had been, was up to. But then, Susan wouldn’t have wanted him now anyway, with his limp and the bungalow, forty-two years of age, and two months into the town-city and walking everywhere, staring at the wet wilderness of waters.
“I see that dog again, up by the old pier.”
“Yeah?” asked the man behind the counter. “What dog’s that, then?”
“I tol’ yer. Didn’ I? I was up there shrimping. An’ I looks an’ it’s swimming aroun’ out there, great big fucker, too. Don’ like the looks of it, mate. I can tell yer.”
“Right.”
“Think I oughta call the RSPCee like?”
“What, the Animal Rights people?” chipped in the other man.
“Nah. He means the RSPCA, don’t ya, Benny?”
“ ’S right. RSPCee. Only it shouldn’ be out there like that on its own. No one about. Just druggies and pushers.”
The man behind the counter filled Benny’s mug with a brown foam of coffee and slapped a bacon sandwich down before the other man at the counter. Johnson, sitting back by the café wall, his breakfast finished, watched them closely in the way he had perfected, seeming not to, seeming miles off.
“An’ it’s allus this time of the month.”
“Didn’t know you still had them, Benny, times of the month.”
Benny shook his head, dismissing-or just missing-the joke. “I don’ mean that.”
“What do ya mean then, pal?”
“I don’ like it. Great big bloody dog like that, out there in the water when it starts ter get dark and just that big moon ter show it.”
“Sure it weren’t a shark?”
“Dog. It was a dog.”
“Live and let live,” said the counter man.
Benny slouched to a table. “You ain’t seen it.”
After
breakfast Johnson had meant to walk up steep Hill Road and take the rocky path along the clifftop and inland, through the forest of newish high-rises, well-decked shops, and SF-movie-dominated cinemas, to the less fashionable supermarket at Crakes Bay.
Now he decided to go eastwards along the beach, following the cliff line, to the place where the warning notices were. There had been a few major rockfalls in the 1990s, so he had heard; less now, they said. People were always getting over the council barricade. A haunt of drug-addicts, too, that area, ‘down-and-outs holing up like rats’ among the boarded-up shops and drownfoundationed houses farther up. Johnson wasn’t afraid of any of that. He didn’t look either well-off or so impoverished as to be desperate. Besides, he’d been mugged in London once or twice. As a general rule, if you kept calm and gave them what they wanted without fuss, no harm befell you. No, it was in a smart office with a weakened man in tears that harm had happened.
The beach was an easy walk. Have to do something more arduous later.
The sand was still damp, the low October sun reflecting in smooth, mirrored strafes where the sea had decided to remain until the next incoming tide fetched it. A faintly hazy morning, salt-smelling and chilly and fresh.
Johnson thought about the dog. Poor animal, no doubt belonging to one of the drugged outcasts. He wondered if, neglected and famished, it had learned to swim out to sea, catching the fish that a full moon lured to the water’s surface.
There were quite a few other people walking on the beach, but after the half mile it took to come around to the pier-end, none at all. There was a dismal beauty to the scene. The steely sea and soft grey-blue sky featuring its sun. The derelict promenade, much of which had collapsed. Behind these the defunct shops with their look of broken toy models, and then the long, helpless arm of the pier, with the hulks of its arcades and tea-rooms, and the ballroom, now mostly a skeleton, where had hung, so books on Sandbourne’s history told one, sixteen crystal chandeliers.
Full MoonCity Page 8
